POLITICS AND RELIGION
A STUDY IN SCOTTISH HISTORY FROM THE REFORMATION
TO THE REVOLUTION
PUBLISHED BY
JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW,
Publishers to the anibersitg.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.
New York, • - The Macmillan Co.
London, - - • Sintpkin, Hamilton and Co.
Cambridge, - • Macmillan and Bowes.
Edinburgh, • • Douglas and Faults.
MCMH.
POLITICS AND RELIGION
A STUDY IN SCOTTISH HISTORY
FROM THE REFORMATION
TO THE REVOLUTION
BY
WILLIAM LAW MATHIESON
VOL. /.
GLASGOW
JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS
to tlu Unitarsitg
1902
Dft
A/37
K/
iJLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO.
PREFACE.
IN this work, without attempting to write a complete
or detailed history, I have endeavoured to give such
a sketch of the political development of Scotland
from the Reformation to the Revolution as may suffice
to explain and illustrate some of its more important
factors — the potency of the national spirit, the relations
of Church and State, the growth of sentiments and
opinions, the rise and conflict of parties, and the
character and influence of leading men. I think that
the question of Church government bulks too largely
in most histories of this period. By two parties —
the ultra- Presbyterian and the ultra-Episcopal — it was
regarded as fundamental ; but the mass of the clergy,
at all events when no question of allegiance was
at stake, were more disposed to throw in their lot
unreservedly with the Scottish people than to contend
for principles of organisation with the civil power ;
and the continuity of the national Church is thus
to be looked for in a deeper current of thought and
Vl PREFACE
feeling than that which was affected by mere eccle-
siastical disputes, I have tried to trace the origin
and progress of this moderate tradition — the tradition,
whatever its faults, of patriotism, humanity, and
culture — as well as of those volcanic elements which
so often shook the Church to its foundation, and
which, in the colder atmosphere of a later day, were
to crystallise into the various forms of modern dissent.
I am indebted to Mr. D. P. Heatley, Lecturer in
History, University of Edinburgh, for the helpful
interest he has taken in the progress of the work.
EDINBURGH : October, 1902.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
THE FRENCH ALLIANCE.
PAGE
Hardships of the alliance, - 1
Efforts of England to detach Scotland from France, - 4
Henry VIII. and the Assured Lords, - - 7
The rise of Protestantism, 8
Mary Stewart to marry Prince Edward ; the treaty broken off, 9
Hertford's punitive expeditions, 1 1
George Wishart ; assassination of Beaton, - 13
Treachery of the Assured Lords ; Pinkie, 15
Mary Stewart betrothed to the Dauphin, 16
Misconduct of the French auxiliaries, - 17
Peace of 1550, the true starting-point of the Reformation, - 18
CONDITION OF THE CHURCH.
The Church its own worst enemy, 19
Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism a proof of this, - 20
Influence of Sir David Lindsay, 22
The Church in extremis, • 23
Origin of the worst abuses, - 26
The nobles engross the wealth of the Church, - 27
Their interests as affected by the Reformation,- - 29
Secularising policy of the Crown, 30
Mercenary spirit of the clergy, - 31
Redeeming features, - 31
Vlll CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION,
1550-1559.
PAOK
Phases of Reformation History, - 34
1550. Apparent security of the Church at the peace of 1550, 35
Archbishop Hamilton's reforming energy, 36
The "gude and godlie ballates," - 37
Relations of Mary of Lorraine with the Hamiltons, 39
1554. She supplants Chatelherault in the Regency, - 42
Consequent disunion of Church and State, 42
— The Queen Regent supported by the Protestants, 43
Her dependence on France, 45
~ Alien character of her administration, - 46
1558. Marriage of Mary Stewart to the Dauphin, 47
1555. The Protestants secede from the Church, 49
1557. They take the aggressive ; the first Band or Covenant, - 50
1558. Crown matrimonial bestowed on the Dauphin, - - 52
Accession of Elizabeth ; Mary Stewart claims the English crown, 53
1559. Causes of the rupture between the Queen Regent and the
Protestants, - 54
CHAPTER II.
THE WAR OF REFORMATION,
1559-1560.
1559. The preachers summoned and outlawed, 58
Iconoclasm at Perth, - 58
— Place of Knox in the Reformation, 59
Ravages of the Reformers accounted for, 61
The Lords of the Congregation enter Edinburgh in arms, 62
Accession of Francis and Mary, - 62
Maitland of Lethington joins the Congregation, 63
Comparative strength of the two parties, 63
•*• Weakness of the Protestant lords, 64
, Apathy of the nation, - 69
1560. English intervention ; Treaty of Berwick, 71
The English army at Leith, 74
Death of Mary of Lorraine, 75
Negotiations for peace, 76
CONTENTS ix
THE REFORMATION PARLIAMENT,
PAGE
Treaty of Edinburgh, - 78
Question of its legality, - 80
The gentry assert their right to be present, - 81
The Confession of Faith ; anti-papal statutes, - 83
The proceedings of the Parliament a violation of the Treaty, - 84
The Soots anxious that Elizabeth should marry Arran, - 86
Elizabeth rejects Arran ; death of Francis II. , - 89
End of an epoch, - 89
CHAPTER III.
JOHN KNOX.
The nobles and the Book of Discipline, - 91
Negotiations preparatory to the Queen's return, 93
Mary's arrival at Leith, 1561, - 95
Knox's protest against the Queen's Mass, 96
A born revolutionary, but called to build, not to destroy, - 98
Incapable of tact or conciliation,- 101"
His apology to Elizabeth,- ... 101
His denunciation of the Anglican service, 102
His attitude towards the provision for the ministry, - 104
His overpowering force of character, - 105
How far a lover of truth,- 106 '
His bitter uncharitableness, - 108
Too intolerant even for his own age, - 111
His work, -------- 113
CHAPTER IV.
MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART,
1561-1567.
Maitland of Lethington, - 11&
Testimony to his greatness, 1 17
His relations with Knox, - 118
His enlightened patriotism, 122
1561. His efforts to establish the Scottish succession in England, - 124
X CONTENTS
PAGE
1562. Proposed interview between Mary and Elizabeth 126
Maitland's policy not fruitless, - 127
1563. Negotiations for Mary's marriage, 128
The Leicester proposal, 1563-1565, 128
1565. Mary resolves to marry Darnley,- 132
Moray's rebellion,- 133
Maitland's attitude towards the Darnley marriage, - 134
Mary's character and aims, 135
Complicity of Maitland in the Marian tragedies, 138
1567. The murder of Darnley, - 139
Maitland joins the coalition against Bothwell, - 140
His reasons for consenting to the Queen's deposition, - 141
His defiance of Elizabeth, 145
Establishment of the Reformed Church,- 147
CHAPTER V.
CIVIL WAR,
1568-1573.
The King's party in two sections, 148
1568. Mary defeated at Langside, and flies to England, 149
The York Conference ; Maitland repels the English overlordship, 150
Maitland and Norfolk prevail on Moray not to accuse the Queen, 152
Moray gives in the accusation, - 153
New alliance between Moray and Norfolk, 154
1569. Perth Convention ; Maitland secedes from the King's party, - 156
Character of Moray, - 156
Maitland vindicates his consistency, - 157
1570. Moray assassinated, 158
English troops sent to assist the King's party, - 159
The war begins, - - 159
Maitland, in shattered health, the soul of the Queen's party, - 160
His exasperation with Elizabeth and England, - 161
His colleagues, Kirkcaldy of Grange and Lord Home, - 162
— » His antipathy to Knox and the Knoxians, 164
Avaricious spirit of the King's party, - 165
The Church identified with this party, - 165
CONTENTS XI
The clergy largely responsible for the ferocious character of PAGE
the war, 166
The nation has no sympathy with the fanatics, - 168
1571. Execution of Archbishop Hamilton, - 169
The Queen's party losing ground, 170
1572. Massacre of St. Bartholomew fatal to Mary's cause, - 171
1573. Maitland and Kirkcaldy still hold out, - 172
Edinburgh Castle bombarded by the English, - 174
Surrender and death of Maitland, 175
Retrospect of his career, - 176
CHAPTER VI.
THE NEW RELIGION.
With the death of Maitland, political gives place to ecclesi-
astical history, - 178
The Reformation primarily a moral, not an intellectual
movement, - 179
How far it asserted the right of private judgment, - 180
A blow to the poetry of religion, 181
The appeal to Scripture, - 183
Moral discipline, - 184
Growth of Puritanism, - 190
Observance of Sunday, - 191
Witchcraft, 194
Growth of a middle class,- 200
Material progress,- 202
Care of church buildings,- 204
Unpriestly character of the Scottish Reformation, - 205
Influence on education, • 206
Demand for books, - ... 208
CHAPTER VII.
CHURCH AND STATE,
1560-1586.
1560. Knox not an advocate of spiritual independence, 211
1567. Acts of 1567 establishing the Reformed Church, 213
The ministers poorly endowed, and worse paid, 214
1564. The Church urges that the two jurisdictions be defined, 216
Xll CONTENTS
PAGE
1572. Morton's Erastian policy, 1572-1578, - 217
The Second Book of Discipline, - 217
Andrew Melville, - 219
1578. The Second Book of Discipline rejected by the State, - 221
1580. Morton supplanted by Lennox ; his execution, 1581, - 222
Intrigues of Lennox for the restoration of Mary, - - 223
1582. Archbishop Montgomery upheld by the State against the Church, 224
The clergy denounce Lennox as a papal emissary, 226
Raid of Ruthven ; banishment of Lennox, 226
The Raid approved by the General Assembly, - 228
1583. James escapes from the Ruthven lords, - 229
1584. Andrew Melville repels the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, - 231
Nature and significance of his plea, 232
The " Black Acts," 235
Nearly all the ministers subscribe the Acts, "according to the
Word of God," 236
1585. The Master of Gray induces Elizabeth to send back the
Ruthven exiles, 237
James refuses to repeal the "Black Acts," 238
1586. Rise of a moderate party in the Church, 240
CHAPTER VIII.
CHURCH AND STATE,
1586-1603.
1586. The League with England, 242
Queen Mary sentenced to death, - 243
1587. The clergy required to pray for her, and some refuse, - 244
Effect on Scotland of the Queen's execution, - 245
1588. The Spanish Armada, 246
Lord Maitland of Thirlestane, - 246
The Armada reconciles Church and State, 248
1592. Presbytery established by statute, 249
The Catholics intrigue with Spain, 252
1594. They win the battle of Glenlivat, 253
James denounced from the pulpit for favouring the Catholics, - 254
The clerical zealots bewail the lukewarmness of the clergy, - 255
The King's popularity with the nation, - 256
His religious policy at home the same as that of Elizabeth abroad, 258
Bothwell's attempts to capture the King 259
CONTENTS xiii
THE CRISIS OF 1596.
PAGE
1596. The High Presbyterians at the zenith of their glory, 261
The Catholic Earls permitted to return, - 262
Black's Case ; the Church repels the jurisdiction of the Council, 263
The courtiers seek to inflame the quarrel, 266
The "no-popery" riot of the 17th December, - 267
THE ECCLESIASTICAL SETTLEMENT.
John Lindsay, Lord Memnuir, - 271
1597- Theocracy abjured by the Assembly at Perth, - 273
The new Commissioners of Assembly, - 274
Proposed representation of the Church in Parliament, - 275
Parliament will admit the clergy only as prelates, 277
1598. The Assembly insists on popular representation, 278
1600. Three of the ministers made bishops, - 280
The King's escape from the Gowrie peril ; extraordinary
demonstration, 280
1602. The new bishops recognised by the Church, - 282
Disinterestedness of the Presbyterian leaders, - 283
CHAPTER IX.
BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS,
1572-1625.
The superintendents not bishops, 285
Bishops appointed by Parliament, 287
1572. The hierarchy restored ; attitude of Knox, - 288 —
1580. The Church repudiates Episcopacy, - 290
Archbishops Montgomery and Adamson, 290
Growth of Moderatism, - 293
Craig, Erskine, and Lindsay, - 294
Relations of the English and the Scottish Church, 298
The Crown asserts its authority over the Assembly, - 303
1605. The High Presbyterians hold an Assembly at Aberdeen, 304 *
1606. Fourteen of them tried for treason, 305 -
Andrew Melville banished, 306
The bishops restored to their estates, - 307
The bishops as Constant Moderators, - 308
1608. The Commissioners of Assembly re-appointed, - 309
XIV CONTENTS
PAOK
1610. Assembly of 1610 ; Episcopacy re-established, - 310
The general desire for peace, - 312
The civil power encroaching on the spiritual, 313
1616. The King proposes the Five Articles, - 315
1618. Perth Assembly ; the Articles adopted, - 316
The bishops reluctant to enforce the Articles, - 317
1625. Miserable results of the King's policy, 1618-1625, - - 318
CHAPTER X.
THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES.
The ecclesiastical compromise, - 321
Archbishop Spottiswoode ; his History, - 323
The ritualistic or High Church party, - 326
Bishop William Forbes, - 327
The ritualists also latitudinarians, 329
Crighton, minister of Paisley, - 330
The permanent element in the Church of Scotland, - 332
Bishop Cowper, - 333
Bishop Patrick Forbes, - 334
The Bishops of Argyll and the Isles, - 338
Dr. John Forbes, - 339
Patrick Simson, - 340
Instability of the moderate regime, 341
The Moderates as characterised by their opponents, - 342
Their services to the Church, - 343
CHAPTER XI.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT,
1625-1638.
j, The thirds of benefices, - 345
Act of 1617 providing for the clergy out of the tithes, - 346
Alleged tyranny of the tithe-owners, - 347
1625. Charles I. 's Act of Revocation, - 348
1629. Valuation and sale of tithes, - 349
Discontent of the nobles, 351
CONTENTS XV
PAGE
1633. Charles's visit to Scotland, 352
" Thwarteous humour " of the nobles in Parliament, - 353
1634. Lord Balmerino prosecuted for libel, - 354
Low Church and High Church bishops, - 355
Bishops Maxwell and Wedderburn, - 357
A Nonconformist party within the Church, 359
"The Stewar ton sickness," 360
1636. The Book of Canons, 361
A new liturgy sanctioned by James VI., but not introduced, - 363
Charles rejects this liturgy, and orders the preparation of
another, 364
Character of Laud's Liturgy, - 367
1637. The Liturgy imposed by royal proclamation, - 369
Riot in St. Giles's, July 23, 1637, 370
Bishops and laymen at issue in the Privy Council, 372
The Council inundated with petitions against the Liturgy, - 373
Petition that bishops be removed from the Council, - 374
The second riot of October 18, - 375
The malcontents allowed to elect Commissioners, 376
The bishops withdraw from the Council, 377
Charles's " long boggling and irresolution," 378
1638. A royal proclamation answered with a protestation, - 379
The Commissioners give place to the Tables, - 379
The Covenant of 1581 revived, and extended to the late
innovations, - 380
Extraordinary enthusiasm evoked by the National Covenant, - 382
CHAPTER XII.
PRESBYTERY RESTORED,
1638.
The Puritan compared with the Protestant revolution,
Rothes, Henderson, and Johnston,
Sufferings of the loyalists,
Charles's failure to satisfy the moderate Episcopalians,
Hamilton as Commissioner ; his instructions, -
He shrinks from demanding the renunciation of the Covenant,
Montrose as a Covenanter, -
Aberdeen refuses the Covenant, -
Charles vainly offers a purely clerical Assembly,
XVi CONTENTS
He surrenders everything but Episcopacy, and proposes a new PA°B
Covenant, - 395
Moderate Covenanters overborne by extremists, 396
The " she-prophetess," 397
Charles resolves to dissolve the Assembly as invalid, - 398
Nominees of the Tables elected by a majority of laymen, 399
The bulk of the clergy decidedly Episcopal, 399
The indictment against the bishops, - 400
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY.
The Assembly meets, November 21, - 401
It claims jurisdiction over the bishops, - 403
Hamilton exposes the irregularity of the elections, - 403
He dissolves the Assembly, and withdraws, - 405
Character of Hamilton, - 406
Character of Traquair, - 408
The Assembly continues to sit, - 409
The proceedings against the bishops, 409
Nature of the revolution, - - - - 411
INTRODUCTION.
THE overthrow of Roman Catholicism in Scotland was
so largely political in character, and proceeded so much
from internal decay, that some account of the relations
of Scotland with France and England prior to 1550,
and of the condition of the Church, will form an appro-
priate introduction to this work.
The Scottish people profited in many ways through
intercourse with the superior civilisation of France ;
but whether the State as such was a gainer by its
alliance with that country is extremely doubtful. It
was at the instigation of Philip the Fair that John
Balliol, in 1296, threw off his allegiance to Edward I. ;
but Philip, though he had thus encouraged the Scots to
strike for independence, contributed very little to their
support. Whatever service he may have rendered
during the first five years of the war was more than
counterbalanced by his conduct in 1303, when he
abandoned the Scots to their fate, and made his own
peace with England. Philip lived long enough to see
the national movement in Scotland crowned with suc-
cess, for he died just five months after the battle of
Bannockburn ; but throughout these eventful years Bruce
owed nothing to the friendship of France. It is an
unpleasant feature of the alliance at this period that it
2 INTRODUCTION
seems to have waxed and waned with the fortunes of
the weaker partner. Thus, having originated in the
treaty between Balliol and Philip the Fair in 1295, it
expired for practical purposes in 1303, and was revived
at Cerbeil in 1326, only two years before the Treaty of
Northampton, by which the independence of Scotland
was formally recognised. As thus renewed indeed, the
alliance was of great use to the Scots during their
struggle with Edward III. ; but this obligation was
fully repaid at the beginning of the following
century, when the Scottish auxiliaries rendered yeoman
service to France on the bloody fields of Beauge,
Crevant, and Verneuil. The battle of Beauge was the
first check to the victorious career of Henry V. ; and at
Verneuil, the Malplaquet of the Hundred Years' War,
the English, though they won the day, lost more
heavily than the French.
Under the influence of the Anglo-French wars the
league altered in character, and, from the Scottish point
of view, it altered for the worse. Hitherto it had been
a bulwark, however unreliable, of the national indepen-
dence. What it was now may be seen in a quotation
from Froissart : " King Philip imagined that the Scots
would find the English too much employment at home
for them to be able to cross the sea ; or, if they did, in
too small numbers to hurt or molest him." Hatred of
England, which still kept the old claim of feudal
superiority suspended, like the sword of Damocles, above
their heads, blinded the Scots to their true interest ;
and history records too many instances in which they
plunged recklessly into war on behalf of their old ally.
There were times, indeed, when the readiness of the
Scots to cross the Border proved somewhat inconvenient
to France ; for, as Scotland was usually included in the
FLODDEN 3
French treaties, a plundering foray might cause diplo-
macy to bewail the collapse of its handiwork. Hence
France sometimes incited the Scots, and sometimes held
them back. The most remarkable instance of this two-
fold policy is to be found at the time of Flodden, when
France first inveigled James IV. into undertaking his
disastrous expedition, then curbed the national desire
for vengeance by forcing on the Scots a most distasteful
peace, and finally, a few years later, exhorted them to
break that peace by a fresh invasion of England. It
has been remarked that at the peace of 1514 " Scotland
was, for the first time, treated as a needy and trouble-
some hanger-on of France." * In the year after Flodden
such a change of policy was singularly inopportune ; nor
can we wonder that the nobles should have declared in
1522 that "for no love, favour, or fair promises of the
French king would they in any wise attempt war against
England or invade that country."2
It shows how unnatural the alliance had now become
that France cannot justly be blamed for these fluctu-
ations of policy, which were the inevitable result of
the position she had attained as a great European
Power, mistress of great part of Italy, and the rival
of the Empire and England. In such circumstances
French diplomacy could not be shaped according to
the needs of a country so weak and isolated as Scot-
land ; but it was none the less unfortunate for the
Scots that they should be tossed about as counters
in a game of high political ambitions, which for them
could have no material interest.
James V. was only a year and a half old when his
father was killed at Flodden ; and the Duke of Albany
1 Burton, The Scot Abroad, i. 142.
2 Ty tier's History of Scotland, v. 133.
4 INTRODUCTION
was appointed Regent. Albany, though a Stewart of
the blood-royal, had lived all his life in France. It
was he who had negotiated the unpopular treaty of
1514, and the Scots bitterly resented the alien char-
acter of his administration. The Regency of Albany
was the first of two experiments in the direction of
governing Scotland as a province of France ; and the
second, as we shall see, proved fatal.1
So far it has been possible to deal with the alliance
merely as a question of relative advantage between
two nations leagued together against a common enemy.
But at a period considerably earlier than that which
we have now reached the French ascendency in Scotland
was threatened by that movement towards national
consolidation, which marks the transition from the
middle to the modern era. In the latter half of the
fifteenth century the nations of Western Europe were
awakening to a deeper consciousness of national unity.
The long war with England had completed the work of
the crusades in consolidating the French monarchy ;
Spain and Portugal had concentrated their power at the
expense of the Moors, and the marriage of Ferdinand
and Isabella in 1469 resulted a few years later in the
union of Castile and Arragon. There is evidence of a
similar movement amongst ourselves in the efforts
made by English statesmen to undermine the power
of France in Scotland. This struggle, conducted more
frequently by diplomacy than by force of arms, may
justly be regarded as a continuation of the Hundred
1 The political history of the Franco- Scottish alliance is sketched by
Hill Burton in The Scot Abroad, and by M. Cheruel in the first chapter
of his Mane Stuart et Catherine de Medicis. Michel's book, Les Ecossai-s en
France, Les Francais en Ecosse, as the title implies, treats the subject
entirely from the social standpoint, from which, of course, the gain is all
on the Scottish side.
ENGLISH INTRIGUES 5
Years' War, from which it is separated only by the
epoch of internal anarchy known to history as the
Wars of the Roses. The York and Tudor sovereigns
did not venture to revive the schemes of foreign
domination, which had contributed to the fall of the
house of Lancaster ; but they hastened to encounter
France on another and more promising field. From the
accession of the house of York down to the union of
the crowns in 1603 there never was an English
sovereign, with the sole exception of Mary Tudor, who
at one period or another was not in league with a
faction in Scotland. Edward IV. encouraged the Duke
of Albany, father of the Regent, in his designs on the
crown of his brother James III. ; many of the nobles
were won over to the same cause, and it was expressly
stipulated that Albany, in the event of his success,
should acknowledge the English overlordship and break
off all connexion with France. Edward IV. was the
first English king who distributed money for
political purposes amongst the Scots ; Richard III.
maintained a regular correspondence with the discon-
tented nobles ; Henry VII. recognised the Duke of
Rothesay as king when he rose in arms against his
father, and he probably countenanced the movement
which led to the defeat and death of James III. in 1488.
This policy of intrigue, which received a great
development at the hands of Henry VIII. and Eliza-
beth, was carried on concurrently with an attempt to
give effect to the natural unity of Britain by more
statesmanlike means. The most obvious expedient for
detaching the Scots from France was to bind them to
England by matrimonial alliances ; and of such alliances
—most of them merely projected — we have a whole
series extending over a period of eighty-five years, from
6 INTRODUCTION
1475 to 1560. James III. sought tlie hand of Eliza-
beth, the widow of Edward IV. ; James IV., who in
1502 married Margaret Tudor, had been betrothed in
infancy to Caecilia, Edward IV. 's daughter ; Henry
VIII. proposed a marriage between James V. and his
daughter Mary, at a time when she was his only child ;
Edward VI. was to have married Mary Stewart ; and
finally, the Earl of Arran was proposed more than once
as a husband for Elizabeth. The tendency of events
thus clearly revealed was interrupted by the Flodden
episode of 1513 ; but a more permanent obstacle to the
recognition of British nationality was the spirit in
which England addressed herself to the task of con-
ciliation. Henry VIII. was distracted between his
desire to gain the friendship of the Scots and his
anxiety to render them innocuous as enemies So long
as Scotland remained loyal to France, it was his interest
to weaken her power to the utmost. During the
regency of Albany, Lord Dacre, his agent at the
Scottish Court, exerted himself with sinister success to
foment every tendency to disorder, even making it
his boast that he had four hundred outlaws in his pay
who daily burned and ravaged throughout the country.
But the most serious mistake of all arose from Henry's
eagerness to anticipate the proposed union of the two
kingdoms, so as to make it available at once as a
barrier between France and Scotland. It was this that
frustrated the negotiations for the marriage of Prince
Edward to Mary Stewart. The Scots had no objection
to a marriage which in the ordinary course of nature
would have secured a common head to two otherwise
independent kingdoms. England was too unpopular
for such an alliance to be hailed with enthusiasm in
Scotland, but there was prudence enough amongst the
THE ASSURED LORDS 7
nobles to ensure its acceptance. Henry, however, had
other ends in view. He had in his power several
Scottish prisoners of rank, who had been captured at
the rout of Solway Moss in 1542. These were now
liberated on parole, and in company with the Earl of
Angus, who had been in exile for fifteen years, were
sent down to Scotland as sworn advocates of the royal
policy. These " Assured Lords," as they were called,
acknowledged Henry as lord superior, and pledged
themselves to do their utmost to obtain for him the
custody of the infant Queen, the administration of the
kingdom during her minority, and the possession of
several of the most important strongholds. In making
these extravagant demands Henry was influenced by
his desire to strike a blow at the French ascendency in
Scotland — the more so, because England, in conjunction
with the Empire, was on the verge of a war with
France. The Scots were naturally quite unable to see
why the results of the proposed marriage should be
anticipated in this high-handed fashion. "I do per-
ceive," wrote Sir Ralph Sadler to Henry, "they have
all one opinion, that, if she (the Queen) were once in
your majesty's hands, howsoever the game should go,
your highness, they say, would dispose the crown of
this realm ; the title and freedom whereof methinks
they be wholly bent to maintain, not willing to have
the same subject to England, till by the consummation
of the marriage God shall unite both realms in one
dominion."1 Henry, in fact, was the victim of two
conflicting aims. It was impossible to reconcile the
Scots to England, and at the same time to secure such
an influence over the government as would be an
effectual bar to the French ascendency. The slightest
1 Sadler, State Papers, i. 99. See also p. 169.
8 INTRODUCTION
suspicion of such a design was enough to rouse the
national spirit, and to rehabilitate the French alliance
as the more honourable alternative in a choice of evils.
At this point the new religion conies into view as a
force to be reckoned with in politics. In Scotland the
heretical tradition was far more nearly continuous than
in England, and the Lollard movement fades almost
imperceptibly into the Lutheranism of the Reformation.
So late as 1494 thirty persons from Ayrshire, known as
" the Lollards of Kyle," were tried, but apparently not
punished, for heresy. There is, however, a line of
demarcation between the old form of dissent and the
new. Knox regarded Patrick Hamilton, who suffered
death in 1528, as the proto-martyr of Protestantism in
Scotland ; for Hamilton, it appears, was the first who
fully grasped the doctrine of justification by faith,
which was the fundamental dogma of the Reformation,1
and that in which it most unequivocally parted com-
pany with the Renaissance. In this year James V.
took the government into his own hands, and the first
phase of the new religious movement is rather more
than conterminous with the period of his personal rule.
King James regarded the Church as a useful but very
degenerate institution, the bulwark of the monarchy
against the nobles, which he would neither remodel in
response to Henry VIII. , nor defend in its integrity at
the instigation of the Pope. Thus he discountenanced
heresy as the seed of revolution ; but, on the other
hand, he upbraided the clergy with their vices, incited
Buchanan to lash the monastic orders in his Fran-
ciscanus, and in 1540 sanctioned the heaviest blow ever
dealt at the falling Church by presiding over the repre-
sentation of Lindsay's Satire of the Three Estates. It
1 Hume Brown's Knox, i. 46, 49.
GROWTH OF PROTESTANTISM 9
was impossible, however, to expose ecclesiastical abuses
without promoting indirectly the theological revolt;
and after James's death, a document was found amongst
his papers containing the names of 360 of the nobility
and gentry who had incurred the suspicion of Cardinal
Beaton as favourers of the new religion.
This remarkable testimony to the progress of at least
potential Protestantism prepares us for that brief re-
hearsal of the Reformation which took place in 1543, at
the outset of the following reign. In the infancy of
Mary Stewart, the Earl of Arran, who stood next in the
succession, was appointed Regent. His name was the
first on Beaton's list, and Knox assures us that all men
esteemed him the most fervent Protestant in Europe.
Arran's first measures did not belie his reputation.
Beaton was thrown into prison ; Protestants, such as
Kirkcaldy of Grange, were admitted to high office; two
evangelical preachers were installed as court-chaplains at
Holyrood ; and the reading of the Bible in English was
authorised by Act of Parliament. In autumn of the
same year the people of Dundee, with the Regent's
sanction, destroyed the houses of the Black and Grey
Friars; the abbey of Lindores was also sacked; and
similar outrages at Edinburgh were averted only by the
intervention of the citizens.
The flame of Protestant zeal burned brightly for a
moment, but it was soon trampled under foot in the
conflict of stronger passions. It so happened that the
same Parliament of 1543, which communicated the
Bible to the people, was that which sat in judgment
on Henry's matrimonial proposals. The Parliament
approved the principle of the marriage ; but it rejected
every one of the preliminary conditions, and went
almost as far as Henry in the opposite direction by
10 INTRODUCTION
requiring that Scotland, even after the union of the
crowns, should retain its ancient name and liberties
under the guardianship of a native and hereditary ruler.
Henry repudiated these terms with scorn. He had pre-
viously made the preposterous demand that Beaton
should be delivered up to him for imprisonment in
England, and he greatly scandalised the Scottish am-
bassadors by insisting on his right as lord paramount to
be at once invested with the government. Henry's
conduct evoked an outburst of popular indignation, and
the people were not careful to distinguish between the
politics and the religion of England. Protestantism
was branded with the stigma of the Assured Lords, one
of whom, Lord Maxwell, had introduced the Act for the
free use of the Scriptures. The Kegent Arran dismissed
his two evangelical chaplains; the Cardinal regained his
liberty; and the Church under his guidance became the
soul of the opposition to the English marriage. Henry
was forced to abate his demands. He consented that
the Queen should remain in Scotland till she was eleven
years of age, and he even went so far as to recognise, in
a modified form, the alliance between Scotland and
France. In this amended shape the treaty was ratified
by the Regent in August, 1543. But the moral effect
of the concessions was entirely nullified by the rumour
of fresh dealings of a very questionable kind between
Henry and his Assured Lords ; the popular agitation
continued to increase; and Arran at last took the step
to which he had long been tending — he reconciled him-
self to the Cardinal and abjured the new religion. An
incident of the time reveals the strength of the current
to which he yielded. Henry was so incensed with what
Sadler reported to him as " the revolt of the governor "
that he seized certain vessels belonging to citizens of
WAR WITH ENGLAND 11
Edinburgh, which had taken refuge in English ports.
The citizens bitterly resented this; but when Henry
offered to restore the ships on condition that they
joined the treasonable conspiracy of the Assured Lords,
they contemptuously rejected his offer, declaring that,
rather than prove traitors to their country, they would
sacrifice ships and goods and life itself. In December
the treaty was repudiated by the Estates on the ground
that it had never been ratified by England ; and the
close of the negotiations, like the beginning, bore wit-
ness to the interdependence of political and religious
interests. The Parliament, which approved the marriage,
had authorised the use of the English Bible : the Parlia-
ment, which now repudiated it, passed an Act for the
repression of heresy. Thus the new religion was driven
out of politics under stress of the national spirit ; and
we shall find that it did not again assert itself till the
influence of nationality, now opposed to it, had been
enlisted in its favour. It was a victory for Catholicism
—almost its last, and Cardinal Beaton might reasonably
believe that he had saved both Church and State.
The collapse of the negotiations made war inevitable,
but it was still a question what form the hostilities
would assume on the part of England. To a war of
conquest, which would have been the logical outcome of
his aggressive policy, Henry felt himself unequal, inas-
much as he was preparing for a great campaign in
France, and could expect no material aid in Scotland
from the Assured Lords ; and he was thus led to adopt,
of all possible courses, the most useless and the most
impolitic — he resolved merely to chastise the Scots for
their undutiful couduct. The Earl of Hertford was
despatched into Scotland on two burning and slaying
expeditions — one in 1544, the other in 1545. The first
1 2 INTRODUCTION
expedition burned Edinburgh, and the town blazed for
three days and nights. In his second expedition Hert-
ford claimed to have burned seven monasteries and
religious houses, sixteen castles, five market-towns, two
hundred and forty-three villages, thirteen mills, and
three hospitals. Knox regarded the burning of Edin-
burgh as God's judgment on the realm for Arran's
apostasy ; and Henry's apologist observes that " the
necessity must be regretted which compelled measures
of so extreme severity."1 It must indeed have been a
singular necessity which forced Henry to make a gift of
Scotland to France and the Pope, for such was the
only result of his ferocious violence ; and the laird of
Buccleuch may be taken as the spokesman of the entire
nation, when he declared to Lord Wharton " that he
would be glad to have the favour of England with his
honour, but he would not be constrained thereto, if all
Teviotdale were burnt to the bottom of hell." 2
James Hamilton, second Earl of Arran, was the
ancestor of a line of statesmen, whose vacillation and
indecision of character have raised them to a singular
pre-eminence in Scottish history. His religion was as
problematical as were his politics ; and his conduct
during the Dundee riots does not impress one with his
qualifications for the task of ecclesiastical reform. His
co-religionists were evidently as lukewarm as himself.
If there really was so large a body of Protestant opinion
in the country as that represented by the 360 lords and
gentlemen of Beaton's list, the facility with which it was
absorbed into the patriotic movement organised by the
Church is really surprising. The faith of Knox was cast
in a very different mould, as may be seen from his
1 Froude's History of England, edition 1860, iv. 324.
-Hill Burton's History of Scotland, iii. 238.
GEORGE WISHART 13
eulogistic references to Henry VIII. and his designs on
Scotland.
It was not long, however, before the Reformation
anticipated the stern and uncompromising character, in
which it has stamped itself on the page of history.
George Wishart is the link which connects the blighted
Protestantism of 1543 with the Protestantism which
triumphed in 1560 ; for the Dundee riots, which Arran
countenanced, are said to have been the result of
Wishart's preaching, and at a later time John Knox
was one of his most devoted disciples. In Wishart we
recognise the forerunner of the impending revolution ;
and his career, though it had little influence at the time,
was an element in the making of an important ecclesi-
astical tradition. He visited Switzerland in 1540 ; and
his translation of the first Helvetic Confession is the
earliest sign of Swiss as distinguished from German
influence as a factor in the Reformation.1 With much
gentleness of disposition Wishart combined the inten-
sity and unconscious egotism of the religious enthusiast.
He denounced the vengeance of Heaven on the people
of Dundee, when they drove him from the town ; on the
citizens of Edinburgh, when they rose, men and women,
in defence of the friars ; and on Haddington, when, on
the last night of his ministry, it turned a deaf ear to his
preaching. After his expulsion from Dundee, he took
refuge in the recesses of Kyle ; and his sermon of three
hours' duration at Mauchline, to a great multitude in
the open air, was probably the first instance in Scotland
of a field-conventicle. The plague visited Dundee just
in time to vindicate Wishart's reputation as a prophet ;
but he showed his superiority to his own conception of
1 Lorimer's Scottish Reformation, p. 97. Wishart's translation of the
Confession is in the Wodrow Miscellany, vol. i.
14 INTRODUCTION
the Deity by returning thither and ministering to the
people so long as the epidemic lasted. Such heroism is
by no means inconsistent with the darker side of
Wishart's character. He was closely associated with
Glencairn and the other lords of the English faction,
though he more than once refused their offer to protect
him by force of arms ; and there is some reason to
believe that he was concerned in the conspiracy against
Beaton's life. We know, at all events, that a person of
the same name was an agent in the plot, and we know,
also, that Wishart was constantly in the company of the
Cardinal's bitterest enemies at the very time when they
were compassing his death. It was at the house of one
of these — Cockburn of Ormiston — that he was appre-
hended in December, 1545.
Wishart was executed in March of the following year ;
and two months later the Cardinal was assassinated by
a party of nine, which surprised him in his own castle
of St. Andrews. This crime, though no doubt stimu-
lated by the desire for vengeance, can hardly be regarded
as an act of retribution for the death of Wishart. For
three years Beaton's life had been aimed at by the
emissaries of Henry VIII. ; and the immediate cause of
his assassination was a personal quarrel with the Master
of Rothes.
" The tragedy of the Cardinal " is merely an incident
in the development of that policy of intrigue, of which
we have seen the beginning in the reign of Edward IV.
Henry laboured for the assassination of Beaton, just as
he had tried to kidnap Beaton's uncle, his predecessor
in the primacy, and just as Lord Dacre, with Henry's
sanction, had maintained a band of cut-throats and
incendiaries for the purpose of embarrassing the Duke
of Albany. The Assured Lords were prominent in this
TREACHERY OF THE ASSURED LORDS 15
as in other parts of their master's business, and one of
them, the Earl of Cassillis, had volunteered for the
office of assassin, with stipulations as to the sufficiency
of the reward. Maxwell was the only one of the faction
who could be induced to return to England at the
expiry of his parole. With the exception of Glencairn,
they all drifted over to the national side ; but of most
of them it must be said that they did not desert Henry
until Henry, on the report of their faithlessness, had
begun to treat them as enemies ; and their faithlessness
was the result of their position as isolated units,
impotent for mischief without the support of retainers
more patriotic than themselves. To Scotland they
proved very questionable allies. More than once they
pledged their allegiance to the Government at the very
time when they were renewing their engagements to
Henry ; on one occasion their treachery caused the
defeat of a Scottish army by a third of its number, on
another it frustrated an invasion of England ; they
incited Hertford to his second expedition, and actually
advised him to march during harvest ; Glencairn fought
a pitched battle with his countrymen only a few weeks
after the burning of Edinburgh ; and though Angus
won a signal victory for Scotland at Ancrum Moor, his
conduct on that occasion proceeded less from patriotic
motives than from a desire to take vengeance on a per-
sonal enemy.
The death of Henry VIIL, in 1547, brought no relief
to Scotland. Hertford, now Duke of Somerset and
Lord Protector in the minority of Edward VI., crossed
the border in September of the same year, and entirely
routed the Scots in the disastrous battle of Pinkie.
Pinkie was a national disgrace — a massacre rather than
a defeat ; but the Scots believed, probably Avith good
16 INTRODUCTION
reason, that they had succumbed rather to English gold
than to English valour. The Assured Lords were at
their old despicable intrigues ; two hundred lords and
gentlemen had secretly pledged themselves to the service
of England ; and there is a most suspicious statement
in Knox's History to the effect that the " professors of
the Evangel " attached themselves to the standard of
Angus in the belief that the English would not deal
hardly with an old friend.1 Angus, however, on that
miserable day behaved like a Douglas and a true Scots-
man ; his phalanx of pikemen more than held their own
against the English cavalry ; and, but for the incom-
petence of Arran, this success might have been the
prelude to a decisive victory.
Throughout the whole struggle it had been recognised
by both parties that the loss of England was the gain of
France. In the Parliament of December, 1543, which
repudiated the marriage treaty, the ambassadors of
Francis I. had promised assistance ; in 1545 a con-
siderable body of French troops had been sent to
Scotland ; and it was a French fleet which had avenged
the murder of Beaton by the capture of the Castle of
St. Andrews. The national disaster of Pinkie left the
Scots more dependent than ever on their ancient ally.
Immediately after the battle the Queen-Mother, Mary
of Lorraine, proposed an appeal for aid to France ; and
in February of the following year it was decided that,
as the Queen could not safely be retained at home, she
should be sent to the French Court, and that proposals
should be made for her marriage to the Dauphin.
Henry II. eagerly embraced this offer — according to one
account " he leapt for blitheness, and was so blithe that
it is incredible," partly at the prospect of extending his
1 Knox's Works, i. 211.
FRANCO-SCOTTISH DISSENSIONS 17
dominion, and partly because he hoped to create such a
diversion as should facilitate the re-capture of Boulogne,
which was then in English hands.1 In token of his
goodwill, he speedily despatched a force of 6000 men to
the assistance of the Scots. In July, 1548, the Scottish
Parliament formally approved the French marriage, on
condition that it should be without prejudice to the
rights and liberties of the realm ; and in August the
same fleet which had brought the French troops to
Scotland, carried Mary Stewart to France. Arran had
some reason to resent this agreement, inasmuch as the
Queen had been intended for his son ; but his influence
now counted for little, and Henry II. was at pains to
compensate him with the Duchy of Chatelherault.
For nearly two years the Scots and the French
worked together at the task of expelling the English.
It is remarkable that, with all their partiality for
France, the Scots had little liking for French visitors.
In 1385, 2000 French auxiliaries came over to assist
in the prosecution of a war which Charles VI. had
been at great pains to stir up between Scotland and
England. They were not at all pleased with their
reception ; and if we can believe Froissart, they went
home in such bad humour that they wished " the king
of France would make a truce with the English for two
or three years, and then march to Scotland and utterly
destroy it ; for never had they seen such wicked people,
nor such ignorant hypocrites and traitors."2 On the
present occasion the joint campaign was marred by
still more serious differences. The troops of Henry II.
— a mixed body of French and Germans — committed
great excesses ; and a tumult, which they raised in
1 Dairy m pie's Leslie (Scot. Text Soc.), ii. 305.
3 Chronicles, Johnes' translation, ii. 56.
B
18 INTRODUCTION
Edinburgh, resulted in the death of the Provost, his
son, and several of the citizens. It appears that the
cavalry had to be kept idle in garrison in order to save
the open country from their ravages ; and Mary of
Lorraine complained to her brother the Cardinal that
ill as she was, she could not venture to leave the army
for fear that the Scots and the French would fly at each
other's throats.1 Nor should it be forgotten that, in
turning to France after Pinkie, the Scots had been
actuated rather by sheer necessity than by excess of
love for an alliance which had lost much of its glamour.
The French marriage had been adopted as a last
resource ; and whoever has studied the Sadler State
Papers must have perceived that the Scottish nobles
regarded the breaking of the league with France as
much the most practicable part of Henry's policy. At
such a crisis, however, the nation could not afford
to be critical. Whatever might be the disadvantages
cf the French connexion, they were as dust in the
balance compared with the danger to the national
independence ; and had the French Government under-
stood more clearly the tenure of its power in Scotland,
its policy during the next ten years would have been
conceived in a very different spirit.
The war came to an end in April, 1550, on terms
equally advantageous to both the allies ; for the English
surrendered Boulogne and evacuated Scotland. The
peace of this year is a memorable epoch in Scottish
history. It is the true starting point of the Reforma-
tion, for it closed the long struggle for national
existence, and it was not till Protestantism had out-
lived its invidious political connexion that it could
1 Teulet's Relations Politiques de la France et de VEspagne avec VEcosse
au X VI." Sttcle, i. 208.
THE CHURCH ITS OWN WORST ENEMY 19
hope to find favour with the Scots. Deeper far than
any question of a change of creed was the determination
of a high-spirited people to maintain the birthright of
freedom bequeathed to it by heroic ancestors. At a
prodigious cost of blood and well-being, in spite of
merciless devastations and a defeat more pitiable than
Flodden, betrayed by her natural leaders and dis-
tracted by religious dissensions, Scotland had been true
to herself and to the spirit of an honourable tradition.
Never again was the independence of the country to be
called in question ; and the sequel showed that English
statesmen had at last become convinced that, if they
wanted the friendship of Scotland, they could have it
only on terms which should recognise the partnership
of two equal nations as the pledge of a closer union. /
Apart from political causes, there can be no question
that the Roman Church in Scotland fell rather from
internal weakness than from the assaults of heresy.
The dogmatism of Knox, which supplied the material
for the new Church, had very little to do with the ruin
of the old. No doubt the religious principle, which
triumphed in 1560, had long been at work, but its opera-
tion was feeble, and was confined to a small minority.
We have had evidence of this in the national crisis
which swept away the nominal Protestantism of 1543.
A faith rooted in conviction would not so easily have
succumbed, as may be seen from the fact that Wishart
began his public ministry just when Arran was on the
point of making his peace with Rome. It is evident
indeed that Beaton, in drawing up his proscription list,
did not distinguish between heretics and disaffected
Catholics ; and the papal legate, who visited Scotland
in 1543 and brought back a gloomy report of his
mission, must also have ignored this distinction —
20 INTRODUCTION
perhaps wisely, for the most dangerous enemies of the
Church were those of her own household. Protestant-
ism, as the standard of revolt, had a natural attraction
for the discontented ; there was a disposition to tamper
with it in a spirit of protest, and thus, under favour-
able political conditions, the new sect might attain
to an importance quite disproportionate to its actual
strength.
The soundness of this position is amply borne out by
the proceedings of the Provincial Council which met at
Edinburgh in 1552, and which applied itself to find
a remedy for certain acknowledged evils. It appears
from the Statutes that ecclesiastical censures had fallen
into general contempt, and that the churches were
almost deserted on Sundays and holy days, even in the
most populous parishes. It was therefore ordained that
the parochial clergy should report absentees to the
dean, and that they should publish every Sunday from
the pulpit the names of excommunicated persons. The
Council recorded its conviction that heresy had been
almost stamped out; but, as something must be done to
secure the results of the victory, and as the clergy were
not sufficiently learned to build up the people in the
faith, it authorised the preparation of a catechism in the
Scottish tongue, which was published a few months
later in the name and at the expense of Archbishop
Hamilton, Beaton's successor in the Primacy. The
Catechism was intended to be read from the pulpit as a
manual of religious instruction, and the object of the
book evidently was to strengthen the position of the
Church in a community ignorant, indifferent, and scorn-
ful ; not, indeed, at all corrupted by false doctrine, but
breathing an atmosphere which still bore the germs of
heretical teaching. In so far as it approaches the
HAMILTON'S CATECHISM 21
doctrinal issues at stake, its tone is precautionary rather
than combative, and in the chapter on heresy there
is nothing in the nature of a special application. Thus,
whilst it exhorts the faithful to " put away vain
curiosity and believe as the holy catholic kirk of God
believes," it nowhere makes any reference to the Re-
formers, such as would have been inevitable and
prominent, had the Church been fighting for existence
against the new opinions. Moreover, the Catechism
displays a most remarkable liberality and independence
of thought, which show how little the freedom of the
Church had been diminished by external pressure, and
which also confirm the view here taken of Protestant
doctrine as diffusive rather than aggressive, an atmos-
phere rather than a creed. If, on the one hand, it
accords special honour to the Virgin and vindicates the
denial of the cup to the laity, on the other hand, it is
silent on the prerogatives of the Pope, it adopts the
Lutheran dogma of justification by faith, and it even
uses language borrowed from the homilies of Henry VIII.
and Edward VI. These peculiarities of the Catechism
are not easily explained; but they, at least, prove that
the temper of the ecclesiastical authorities had not been
embittered by controversy, and they are in perfect
harmony with the main purpose of the book, which was
to revive and to stimulate the religious consciousness of
the people. Few works of the kind have more faith-
fully interpreted the permanent teaching of Chris-
tianity; and had the catechist been aware that he was
recording the dying testimony of his Church, he could
not have written with a sweeter serenity or in a milder
and more charitable spirit.1
1 Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism, edited by Thomas Graves Law.
Dr. Law's Introduction is particularly valuable.
22 INTRODUCTION
The evils which the Catechism sought to remedy
were in one sense a protection to the Church, since the
religious indifference of the people was an obstacle to
the diffusion of heresy. Unfortunately, however, for
the hierarchy, there was one brilliant writer, who from
the dawn of the Reformation to within a few years of
its triumph never ceased to expose the corruption of
the priesthood in a manner which even the most
careless could not fail to appreciate. Sir David
Lindsay's first work, The Dreme, appeared in 1528, the
year of Patrick Hamilton's martyrdom; his last, The
Monarchic, in 1553, and he died in 1555. Whether he
was really a Catholic reformer of the Erasmian type, or
whether, as is far more probable, he did not declare
himself a Protestant only because the new religion
in his day had not been rigidly defined, Lindsay, in
spite of an occasional tendency to sermonise, writes
mainly as a layman and a man of the world — one in
whose eyes ecclesiastical abuses wrere not so much
sinful as ridiculous to common sense and an outrage
on common decency. Thus, with his varied know-
ledge, and his coarse but genial humour, he appealed
irresistibly to the secular spirit of his day ; and it
was probably due, in some measure, to his influence
that the decline of the old religion so far overshot
the progress of the new, and that the monasteries
were thrown to the ground at a time when Pro-
testantism had evidently no hold on the nation at
large. Lindsay's immunity from the wrath of his
enemies, though explained to some extent by his social
position and his intimacy with James V., is very
remarkable. His Satire of the Three Estates was
acted in 1540. A year or two before, Friar Killor
had ventured to rebuke the conduct of the clergy in
CLERICAL LICENSE 23
a drama of the Passion played before the king at
Stirling, and he paid for his boldness by being burned
as a heretic.
*l We cannot, of course, accept satire as serious history ;
but the substantial truthfulness of the picture presented
to us in the comedy of the Three Estates is attested not
merely by such zealous Catholics as Winzet and Abbot
Kennedy, but by the remedial legislation of the Church
itself. As early as the beginning of the fifteenth century
the vices of the cloister had provoked a severe remon-
strance from James the First, and the secular clergy soon
vied with the regular in their repudiation of the law of
chastity. So notorious did the matter become, that
Lindsay represents the priests as enjoying an unfair
advantage in that they were not subject, like the laity,
to the restrictions of marriage. Many of the bishops
were audaciously profligate — Cardinal Beaton is supposed
to have had nine children, and Bishop Hepburn of
Moray, who survived the Reformation, had undoubtedly
ten, all by different mothers ; and their incontinence
was the more mischievous because it led them to abuse
their rights of patronage by providing for their offspring
at the expense of the Church. One of the scandals of
the time was the nomination of prelates' sons, even in
infancy, to substantial benefices.
Even worse than the licentiousness of the clergy was
their amazing incompetence. Every department of the
Church bore witness to the general neglect of duty.
Many of the abbeys were engrossed by the bishops,
many were gifted away as rich sinecures to the sons of
nobles. The parishes had always been too large to
admit of the effectual Christianising of the people ; and
the great majority of the livings had been " appro-
priated " to the bishoprics and monasteries, especially to
24 INTRODUCTION
the latter, with the result that they were either left
vacant or entrusted to ill-paid vicars, and the churches
in many cases allowed to fall into decay. It has been
estimated that at the time of the Reformation there
were only 262 parsonages as against more than 600
cures served, if served at all, by episcopal and monastic
vicars.1 The Abbey of Kelso had 36 churches, that of
Arbroath 32, that of Paisley 28.2 Public worship had
degenerated into a mere round of mechanical ceremonies,
utterly unintelligible to the hearers. The parishioners
seldom troubled to attend, and the scanty congregation
indulged in laughter and noisy talk, or loitered for
traffic or pastime at the church porch. Women were
allowed to use even conventual churches as a market for
their linen. Catholic and Protestant reformers alike
denounced the parochial clergy as " dumb dogs " — men
who could neither preach nor read, holders of an office
which they knew not how to use. The neglect of
preaching was indeed a glaring anomaly, for it impressed
on the laity the fact that they paid dearly for a Church,
which gave them nothing in return.3 Such preaching
as there was was done by the friars, and so absolute had
become their monopoly of the pulpit that it was actually
objected to Forret, vicar of Dollar, and one of the
early martyrs, that he preached every Sunday to his
parishioners. In 1559 the Bishop of Aberdeen, having
asked the advice of his chapter on the question of
ecclesiastical reform, was exhorted to provide for at
least one sermon in every parish church before the
beginning of Lent, and one more between that and
1 Connell on Tithes, second edition, i. 70.
3 Forbes's Church Lands and Tithes, p. 96.
3 "The law is plaine, our teinds suld furnisch teichours." — Lindsay's
Worts, edited by Laing, ii. 148.
A SPIRITUAL INTERREGNUM 25
Easter. Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism was intended
to supply the deficiencies of the clergy ; they were to
read a portion of it every Sunday and holy day, and
they were expressly warned " not to mount the pulpit
unprepared, but frequently to rehearse beforehand what
they were going to read, so that they might not by
stammering and stuttering become a laughing-stock to
their hearers." l
Such was the state of religion in Scotland in the first
half of the sixteenth century, and it is to the forces
generated during this period of spiritual interregnum
that we must ascribe, not merely the violence of the
Reformation, but also some of the most unlovely
characteristics of the Reformed Church. It would
certainly have been better for Scotland, could the
religious tradition of the country have been preserved
unbroken ; but the Reformers are not responsible for
a disaster which was the work of their predecessors.
Reverence for the past in such a case was hardly
possible, and it is not surprising that the Reformed
Communion, in its harshness of spirit and barrenness of
taste, should long have borne traces of its posthumous
origin.
Perhaps the most serious of the evils, which have
just been described, was the destruction of the parochial
system through the growth of the monasteries ; but
this evil, in common with many others, could not
produce its full effect, till the monasteries had been
perverted to secular uses. In Scotland the Church
seems never to have been able to secure itself against
the inroads of powerful laymen. Such livings as had
not been engrossed by the bishoprics and the abbeys
1 Bellesheim's History of the Catholic Church in Scotland, translated by
D. O. Hunter Blair, ii. 215.
26 INTRODUCTION
were mostly in the gift of the lord of the soil ; and in
such cases the desire of the landowner to provide for
his relatives and dependents frequently defeated the
efforts of the Church to insist on episcopal collation.1
So long, however, as the royal authority was exerted to
preserve to the chapters and convents their rights of
election, the evil was confined to subordinate offices.
The choice of bishops and abbots was practically free ;
for the royal right of recommendation was seldom
exercised, and the prerogative of the Pope was limited
to the issuing of a bill of confirmation.2 If the king
did intervene, it was usually only to recommend to the
electors one of their own number or to introduce an
ecclesiastic whose learning and abilities were beyond
dispute. James III., however, in 1473 established a
most pernicious precedent by quashing the election of
an abbot by the monks of Dunfermline and procuring
the confirmation at Rome of his own nominee.3 From
this year down to the Reformation, a period of nearly
ninety years, the wealth of the Church was at the
mercy of the king and of all who could obtain his
favour. The worst feature of the new system — for
James's innovation soon became the regular usage — was
not the mere extinction of electoral freedom, though of
this the clergy loudly complained, but the bringing in
of a new race of prelates — men of merely secular
ambition, whose manner of life savoured little of the
clerical calling. Henceforward the court, and not the
1 " At no time during the three hundred years which preceded the
Reformation does it appear that the Scottish Bishops succeeded in making
orders an indispensable qualification for a benefice." — Robertson's Statuta
Ecclesiae Scoticanae, I. ccvi.
'-Pinkertou, i. 413-15.
3 Leslie's History of Scotland, p. 40.
THE NOBLES AND THE CHURCH 27
chapter or the cloister, was the true centre of eccle-
siastical life.1
In this " abusion of the prelacies " the nobles found
their opportunity. They were poor, and the Church
was immensely rich. The ecclesiastical property in
Scotland is said to have been half of the national
wealth, and the prelates, as one of the three estates,
were assessed to the amount of one half of the public
contributions. Even the pride of birth abated its
pretensions with a view to participating in so splendid
an inheritance. The wealth of the superior clergy
induced even women of good family to live with them
in a species of licensed concubinage. Their daughters,
richly dowered with the alienated patrimony of the
Church, were considered a good match for the sons of
the nobility. Bishop Chisholm of Dunblane, the poorest
of the Scottish sees, could afford to give his daughter
£1000 on her marriage with Sir James Stirling of Keir,
and Cardinal Beaton just before his death married his
daughter to the Master of Crawford with a dowry of
4000 merks. But the scandalous abuse of patronage
introduced by James III. enabled the nobles to engross
the wealth of the Church by means which enhanced,
instead of compromising, their dignity. The richest
preferments were now open to any one who could make
influence at court. We are told by a Catholic con-
temporary that, whenever any benefice fell vacant, the
1 Bishop Leslie shows very clearly how the evil was wrought. " The
Court of Rome admitted the prince's supplications, the rather that they
got great profit and sums of money thereby : wherefore the bishops durst
not confirm them that was chosen by the convent, nor they who were
elected durst not pursue their own right. And so the abbeys came to
secular abuses," p. 40. Of James IV. it is said, " Without counsel of
spiritual estate he gave all benefices that vaikit in his time to his
familiars .... whereof came great skaith on this realm " — Diurnal of
Occurrents, p. 4.
28 INTRODUCTION
great men of the realm would press their claims to it
with threats of sedition, and whoever obtained the prize
would use it to promote sons or brothers more ignorant
and more profligate than himself — so much so, that it
was a question whether the abbot or his mule was the
better fitted to discharge his office, or whether Balaam's
ass might not have been superior in intelligence to them
both.1 It mattered little whether the benefice was
bestowed in commendam, with no duty prescribed but
that of consuming the revenues, or whether the scion of
some noble house really did take orders with a view to
obtaining it, for in either case the presentee was often
a mere child, whose family appropriated the rents to
their own use and left the convent to shift for itself.
Dr. Magnus, the agent of Henry VIII. , was astonished
to hear that John Hamilton, the future Primate, had
been made Abbot of Paisley at the age of twelve ; and
when Hamilton in 1553 resigned the Abbey to his
nephew, the latter was only ten. James V.'s natural
children were a good deal younger when their father
appointed them to the five richest monasteries in
Scotland — Holyrood, Kelso, Melrose, Coldingham, and
St. Andrews. The great nobles had come to regard the
abbeys as a provision for their younger sons. At the
crisis of the Reformation we find a Hamilton in Paisley,
another in Arbroath, and another in Kilwinning, a son
of the Earl of Rothes in Lindores, a son of Argyll in
Coupar-Angus, and a son of the Earl of Cassillis in
Crossraguel, whilst the abbeys of Jedburgh and New-
battle had been engrossed by the House of Kerr.2
In view of such facts as these it is not surprising that
the nobles should have failed to convince opponents of
1 Kennedy's " Compendius Tractive," Wodrow Miscellany, i. 151.
2 Keith's Church and State, i. 313-14.
THE NOBLES AND THE CHURCH 29
their disinterestedness in the work of Reformation.
They could hardly rebut the charge that the Church
they denounced as corrupt beyond all hope of remedy
had deteriorated largely through their own misdoing ; l
and we can easily understand the exasperation of the
faithful when they saw the Church overthrown, and the
nobles more powerful than ever. Writers of a certain
school have sought to minimise the importance of
aristocratic avarice as a factor in the Reformation ; but
in point of fact there are few revolutions recorded in
history where the presence of self-regarding motives
is so exceedingly obvious. We need not emphasise the
very natural supposition that the illicit enjoyment of
ecclesiastical revenues must have suggested schemes of
spoliation. Even if we suppose that the nobles were
without guile in the matter of covetousness, they could
hardly be indifferent to what was required for the
securing of privileges already gained. Had the Roman
Church succeeded in reforming itself, as it strove to do,
all the abuses on which the aristocracy had flourished
for nearly a century would have been swept away.
There would have been no more commendators, no more
convents secured through child-abbots to rapacious
parents, no more fortunes to be won with daughters of
the episcopate. The nobles were the only section of
the community which gained anything by the continu-
ance of the old system, and they might hope to gain
more by the overthrow of the Church and the confisca-
tion of ecclesiastical property ; but the thing which was
most of all opposed to their interests was the restoration
1 " They, who are the procurers, disponers, and upsteraris of sick
monstrous farces to be in the Kirk of God, are the most principal cryers
out on the vices of Kirk-men." — Kennedy's " Tractive," Wodrow Miscel-
lany, i. 151. See also "VYinzet's Tractates, i. 7-9.
30 INTRODUCTION
of the Church to its original purity. We should
naturally infer from this that any attempt at conserva-
tive reform would only precipitate the impending
revolution ; and such, if we can believe Bishop Leslie,
was actually the case. The Provincial Council of 1559,
the last ever held by the Ancient Church, passed many
excellent statutes, the object of which was to enforce on
the pseudo-ecclesiatics the performance of their duties ;
and Leslie assures us that many young abbots and
priors went over on this account to the Protestants,
" fearing themselves to be put at, according to the laws
and statutes." *
It was under the sanction of the Crown that these
abuses had sprung up, and the antagonism between the
Crown and the nobles, especially in the reign of James
V., contributed almost as much as royal favouritism to
the secularising of the Church. The bishops were
usually nominated by the king from the sons of the
lesser barons. They were drawn from a class naturally
disposed to look with jealousy on the great landowners,
and this feeling of rivalry was stimulated by the royal
policy which looked to the Church to maintain the
balance of the State against the excesses of feudalism.
Thus the bishops became statesmen rather than ecclesi-
astics ; they accumulated offices, political as well as
spiritual, and maintained large and unruly households.2
For fifty years before the Reformation the office of
Chancellor had never been held by a layman ; and
Archbishop Beaton, uncle of the more famous Cardinal,
1 History, p. 271.
2 The Provincial Council of 1549 ordained " prelates not to keep in their
households notorious drunkards, gamblers, whoremongers, brawlers,
night-walkers, buffoons, blasphemers, swearers." — Winzet's Tractates (Scot.
Text Soc.), ii. 96.
RAPACITY OF THE PRIESTHOOD 31
besides being Lord Chancellor, was Abbot of Dun-
fermline, Arbroath, and Kil winning.
With bishops made at Court in furtherance of a
courtly policy, with abbots who were not Churchmen, and
parsons who could neither preach nor read, the Church
became thoroughly mercenary in spirit; and we have
sufficient evidence of this in the harshness and rapacity
of her relations with the people. The clergy had
once been the most indulgent of landlords ; but now
the strange spectacle was seen of poor tenants being
evicted from the Church lands to make room for
others who could afford to pay higher rents. The
teinds were rigorously assessed on the peasantry, those
in arrear being debarred from the communion, and
on the death of every parishioner the vicar demanded
his mortuary dues — the Kirk Cow and the Upmost
Cloth, or coverlet. James V. vainly urged on the
clergy the renunciation of this tribute, which was par-
ticularly odious owing to its being levied chiefly
on widows and orphans. The prolixity and expense
of the Consistory Courts, which had a wide jurisdic-
tion in matrimonial and testamentary causes, evoked
the most vehement discontent;1 and the laity com-
plained that their substance was wasted by rapacious
priests, who in defiance of the law intrigued for benefices
at Rome.
The Church, of which these things can be said, was
evidently hastening to its doom ; but it would be
foolish as well as uncharitable not to recognise that
there were elements of vitality to the last in the
ancient ecclesiastical system. The prelates were not
1 " We man reforme thir consistory lawis
Quhais great defame above the heavins blawis."
— Laing's Lindsay, ii. 154.
32 INTRODUCTION
all profligate, and the clergy as a body were redeemed
from disgrace by " certane lamps of pietie and haly-
ness," such as Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen, one
of the brightest names in the whole compass of
Scottish history, unwearied in well-doing, learned,
devout, intensely patriotic, devoted to the duties of
his diocese even in the highest political offices ; such
as Abbot Myln, the first President of the Court of
Session, and Bishop Reid of Orkney, and Ninian
Winzet, the schoolmaster of Linlithgow. In one
respect the Church was the victim of her own good
works, for through her noble exertions in the cause
of education she had fostered a spirit of inquiry in
almost all ranks of the people, which in these her last
degenerate days was inevitably turned against herself.
At a time when Lindsay's poems were to be found in
every pedlar's pack, there was evidently no lack of
readers. Knox implies that in the Parliament of
1543 the lay members showed themselves more pro-
ficient in Greek than the clergy, and it was due to
the influence of the Church that the upper and middle
classes had become superior in intelligence to the
bulk of the priesthood. Before the Reformation,
schools had been planted under clerical superinten-
dence, if not in every parish, at least in almost every
village with pretensions to be a town ; and the work
was still in progress as the end drew near. A grammar
school was founded at Crail in 1542, and another at
Kirkwall in 1544;1 nor need one refer to those famous
seats of learning, whose scanty endowments have
sufficed to give light and leading to so many genera-
tions of Scottish students -- Paupertas fecunda
virorum. Two of the Universities — St. Andrews and
1 Grant's History of the Burgh Schools of Scotland, pp. 21, 43.
THE UNIVERSITIES 33
Glasgow — were indeed founded before the decline of
the Church had definitely begun, but St. Andrews
traces two of its three colleges to the first half of the
sixteenth century. In the history of higher education
in Scotland names so seldom coupled as Elphinstone
and Beaton, Reid and Hamilton, are honourably
associated ; and it helps to bridge over the chasm
between the old faith and the new, when we remem-
ber that the University of Edinburgh, though a post-
Keformation college, originated in a bequest of the
Bishop of Orkney in 1558.
CHAPTER I.
THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559.
THE Reformation in Scotland — to use the term in its
widest sense — falls naturally into three main divisions.
From the martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton in 1528 to
the peace with England in 1550 the Protestant move-
ment struggled in vain against an adverse political
tendency ; during the next ten years it went steadily
forward till its progress was arrested at a time when it
had overthrown the ascendency of the old religion
without really securing its own ; and then comes a
period of transition ending with the establishment of
the Reformed Church in 1567, though the triumph of
the latter was not complete in all respects until 1573.
The second of these periods is dominated by political
conditions, which are almost the opposite of those we
found to be paramount in the first, the spirit of
nationality being either quiescent or enlisted, nominally
at least, on the Protestant side ; and indeed we shall
find that religion was so far from being the only issue
at stake that this period might be characterised in the
German idiom of Mommsen as that of the politico-
religious revolution. The third period, if not the most
important, is probably the most attractive and the most
POLITICAL CONDITIONS 35
picturesque ; for here Protestantism is divided against
itself; in the breaking up of the phalanx individuals
force themselves on our attention ; and the period has
thus a dramatic interest which has insured its popularity
with all readers of Scottish history. It is with the
second of these phases of the Reformation that we shall
have to deal in this and in the following chapter.
The miserable condition of the Church was acknow-
ledged by all parties; but at the peace of 1550 the
balance of political forces was still decidedly in its
favour, and few persons could have foreseen that the
next ten years would suffice for the triumph of the
revolution. Hitherto the Catholic cause had been
singularly fortunate in the course of events. James V.,
in spite of his impatience of ecclesiastical abuses, had
closely allied himself with the clergy, and after his
death in 1542 the patriotic feeling of the country had
revolted against the attempt to inaugurate the Re-
formation in concurrence with the aggressive designs of
Henry VIII. In Cardinal Beaton the Church had
found an able leader, who realised the identity of her
interests with those of the State, and who proved
capable of turning the coincidence to the best account.
It might have been expected that the cessation of the
strife with England, which had so long dammed back
the tide of heresy, would of necessity endanger the
Church ; but the course of the war had obviated the
natural tendency of its conclusion, for the impolicy of
Henry and Somerset in resorting to coercion, when
mild measures failed, had almost annihilated the English
party amongst the nobles, and had brought about a
matrimonial alliance with France, which bade fair to be
the strongest available guarantee of Catholic ascendency
in Scotland.
36 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
We can thus understand the confident tone adopted
by the Provincial Council of 1552 ; but Archbishop
Hamilton was well aware that political defences were
powerless to save the Church, except in so far as they
gave scope and opportunity for the work of internal
reform. What such men as he had most of all to dread
was that the great mass of the ignorant and the scornful
might become infected with a distinctly heretical spirit.
Scotland, as a whole, was neither Catholic nor Pro-
testant. The gross incompetence of the priesthood had
reduced the religious consciousness of the people almost
to a vacuum, and it became a question whether the
void would be recovered by the old religion or appro-
priated by the new. The Archbishop's Catechism was
a most creditable attempt to win back for the Church
her ancient heritage ; but it was merely the most
important of a series of similar measures. Already in
the Provincial Council of 1549, he had made provision
for " teaching by more worthy masters," one result of
which was the appointment of Ninian Winzet to the
grammar school of Linlithgow. He completed and
endowed St. Mary's College at St. Andrews with a view
to its becoming a training-school for priests, and he
ordained that each of the monasteries should set aside
funds sufficient to maintain at least one of its members
at the University. He also made strenuous exertions
to reform the morals of the clergy ; but his own private
life was very far from blameless, though his licentious-
ness partook more of a domestic character than that of
several of his colleagues ; and the notorious Bishop
Hepburn is said to have publicly defended the reten-
tion of his mistress by a reference to Hamilton's
example.1 Historically these measures are interesting
1 Pitscottie Chronicle, p. 526.
THE "GUDE AND GODLIE BALLATES" 37
merely as a record of good intentions ; but the Church
may be pronounced fortunate in the reforming energy
of the last of her primates, as in different circumstances
she had been fortunate in the statesmanship of Beaton.
In reality, however, the position of the Church was
far more perilous than the mere chronicle of events
would lead one to suppose, and a very little reflection
will suffice to reveal an adverse tendency in those very
circumstances, which on the surface appear the most
favourable to the Catholic cause. The early Protestant
movement had been emphatically repudiated by the
country ; through the capture of the Castle of St.
Andrews, in 1547, it had been deprived at a stroke of
almost all its political chiefs ; and from that year down
to the return of Knox in the autumn of 1555 it reckoned
no one in its ranks who could be regarded as a great
religious leader. But this apparent defeat was in the
fullest sense a blessing in disguise, for it facilitated the
diffusion of the new religion by emancipating it from
the control of an unpopular faction. The an ti- clerical
spirjjbijwhich^ jfound its most perfect^expression in Lind-
say's satires, was infinitely more popular than the
dogmatic teaching of the early reformers, and nothing
could be more fatal to the Church than that Lindsay's
readers should be definitely enlisted on the Protestant
side. We thus see at once the profound significance of
those " gude and godlie ballates," which, in so far as
they were the work of John Wedderburn of Dundee,
are supposed to have been published between 1542 and
1546. This very singular literature, composed partly of
metrical translations of the Psalms and of Luther's
hymns, and partly of pious doggerel, grafted on licentious
ditties and adapted to popular tunes, was the growth
of many years, and some of it was evidently written_at
38 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
the crisis of the Reformation, or even later ; but a canon
of the Provincial Council of 1549, which enjoined search
for books of rhyme, either heretical in tone or scandalous
to the clergy, was probably aimed as much against
Wedderburn as against Lindsay. The ballads circulated
chiefly amongst the substantial burgher class, the nobles
being mostly indifferent to the doctrinal question at
stake, and the peasantry too ignorant to understand it ;
they are said to have been popular for more than half a
century, and a collected edition was published as late as
1621.1
The overthrow of the English Reformation through
the accession of Mary Tudor in 1555 was another of
those seemingly untoward events which stimulated the
growth of Protestantism in Scotland. Whatever taint
of disloyalty still clung to the Protestant party was
dissipated through the restoration of Catholicism in
England ; and the new opinions were sedulously propa-
gated by Protestant refugees, one of whom, John
Willock, achieved a reputation second only to that of
Knox.
But it is in the sphere of domestic politics that the
contrast between the fictitious strength of the Church
and its real weakness is most strongly marked. The
English war, though it resulted in the triumph of
Catholic counsels in Scotland, had nevertheless given
rise to two tendencies, the development of which
sufficed in ten years' time to establish the Reformation.
The first of these, though not the more important, was
a conflict of interests between the temporal and spiritual
powers. From the time of Arran's so-called apostasy
in 1543 to the death of Beaton in 1546, Church and
1 Professor Mitchell's The Wedderburns and their Work ; Dalzell's
Scottish Poems of the Sixteenth Century.
THE REGENT ARRAN 39
State had cordially co-operated against the Protestants ;
and after the Cardinal's assassination their union ought
to have been still more complete, for Hamilton, the new
Primate, was Arran's natural brother. Somerset's in-
vasion, however, had driven the Scots into the arms of
France ; the betrothal of Mary to the Dauphin was a
serious blow to Arran, whose son she was to have
married, and it naturally gave great influence to Mary
of Lorraine, the Queen Dowager, whose brothers were
then in the ascendant at the French court. Students
of English history may perhaps recognise in Arran the
Rockingham of the Scottish Reformation — a man of
great wealth, charming manners, and most indolent
temper, whom his friends used as a tool, whilst pro-
fessing to defer to him as a leader. Knox taunts him
with having sold the Queen to France ; and whether it
was that he sacrificed his private interest to the national
safety,1 or that he really considered the duchy of
Chatelherault as sufficient compensation for the blighted
prospects of his family, it is certain that he not only
did not oppose the French marriage, but even exerted
himself in its favour. His partiality for France was,
indeed, considerably cooled by the conduct of the French
auxiliaries during the war ; 2 and it was probably this that
gave rise to a rumour of his disloyalty at the court of
Henry II. — a rumour which Mary of Lorraine, as late as
January, 1550, contradicted in the most indignant terms,
declaring that she had not " deux plus fideles servi-
teurs" than the Duke and his brother the Archbishop.8
1 Leslie, p. 204.
2Teulet's Relations Politiques de la France et de VEtpagne avec VEcosse
au, XVI* Sttcle, i. 222.
3"S'il est vrai que 1'on a fait au Roi un mauvais rapport de mon
cousin, Monsieur le Gouverneur et de son frere, je vous aasurerai qu'il
n'a point deux plus fiddles serviteurs qu'ils ne sont ; et quant a moi,
40 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
The word serviteur was more in keeping with the Duke's
real relation to the Dowager than with his official
position as Governor of Scotland. Ever since the fatal
battle of Pinkie, Mary had been the virtual ruler of the
country. As early as 1544 she had been proclaimed
Regent by a convention of the nobility ; and though
this proceeding was quite irregular, and was declared
null by Parliament a few months later, the time had
come when her pretensions to have the name as well as
the substance of power could no longer be disregarded.
Both the chief parties in the State were favourable to
the proposed change of rulers — the Catholics, because
they regarded France as their best friend ; the
Protestants, because Mary had gained their goodwill
and because Chatelherault was odious to them as the
brother of the Primate, and formerly an agent (though
doubtless an unwilling one) in the persecutions of
Beaton.
After the peace of April, 1550, the Dowager visited
the French Court in order to seek assistance from
Henry II. in her designs on the Regency. In this she
was entirely successful ; and Henry exerted himself so
warmly in the cause that he made converts of several
of Chatelherault 's personal friends, one of whom, Bishop
Panter of Ross, the Scottish ambassador at Paris, was
sent over to solicit the Duke's resignation, and suc-
ceeded at last in wringing from him a favourable
answer. The Duke, it seems, had some misgivings as to
his administration of the royal revenue ; he was
tempted by Henry's offer to make the dukedom of
c'est ma faute s'ils ne font bien, car tout ce que je veux d'eux, je 1'ai ; et
il n'est gentilhomme de ma maison que me porte autant d'honneur et
d'ob6issance qu'ils le font." — The Queen Dowager to the Due d'Aumale.
Ibid., i. 214.
THE REGENT ARRAN 41
Chatelherault1 hereditary in his family ; and, above all,
his brother, the redoubtable Primate, was lying very
seriously ill, speechless, and given over for dead.
Archbishop Hamilton, however, lived to disappoint the
hopes of his enemies, and to curse the Regent as "a
very beast" for having surrendered the government
at a time when there was nothing but a weakly girl
between him and the Crown.2 Thus, when Panter, a
few months after the Dowager's return in the autumn
of 1551, called upon the Duke to fulfil his promise,
all the previous negotiations proved to have been wasted
labour. The Duke refused to resign ; and for nearly
a year matters drifted on in uncertainty — the Dowager
holding a crowded court at Stirling, and Chatelherault
a very meagre one at Edinburgh. Meanwhile, Mary
Stewart appointed Henry II. , the Cardinal, and Duke of
Guise as her curators for the government of Scotland
—the Parliament of Paris having decided very gratuit-
ously that she had the right to do so; and these at
once devolved their functions on the Queen Dowager.
Thus the Duke found both Scotland and France united
against him; the young Queen formally demanded his
resignation ; and his few supporters dwindled away,
until none were left to him but the Primate and Lord
Livingstone. Resistance was evidently hopeless; and
1 This point is somewhat obscure. Both Tytler and Burton, following
Bishop Leslie, say that Arran got the dukedom in return for his resigna-
tion of the regency. In point of fact, he was created Duke of Chatel-
herault by Henry II. on February 8, 1548, the very day on which the
betrothal of Mary to the Dauphin was approved by the Scottish Parlia-
ment— Knox's Works, i. 217, note ; and henceforward he is always
mentioned by his new title in Knox's history and in the letters published
by Teulet. Leslie's statement that Henry II. in 1550 made "a gift of the
ducherie of Chattilliro in heritage to the Earl of Arraii" is not necessarily
inconsistent with this fact.
2 Sir James Melville's Memoirs, p. 21.
42 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
in the Parliament of April, 1554, he formally resigned
the Regency into the hands of Mary of Lorraine.1
It thus appears that the movement which placed the
Queen Dowager at the head of the government, far
from being a party movement, was the outcome of
many conflicting interests. Unfortunately, however,
both for herself and for her daughter, the Dowager
failed to maintain her position as the choice of the
nation ; and the man who did more than anyone else to
bring about this result was undoubtedly Archbishop
Hamilton. Unlike his brother, who easily reconciled
himself to the new regime, Hamilton remained steadfast
in opposition. The Duke's abdication had ruined his
hopes of ruling Scotland vicariously, as Beaton had
done before him, and he had also a more tangible
grievance, inasmuch as the new Regent turned him out
of the office of Lord High Treasurer to make room for
her adherent, the Earl of Cassillis.2 It was easy for a
man of his ability to find followers. As the good
understanding between the Dowager and the Pro-
testants became more and more apparent, the hierarchy
rallied round the Primate, whilst conversely the
Dowager was forced by the Primate's hostility into
closer relations with the Protestants. Thus the cleav-
age of religion cut off the civil from the ecclesiastical
power; and Mary, contrary to her wishes and her
interest, drifted into a position of direct antagonism to
the Church. How wide the breach really was may be
seen from the charge afterwards brought against her by
the Lords of the Congregation that she gave prelacies
1 Leslie, p. 238, 245. Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 51. Chatelherault left a
debt of £30,000, which Mary paid off in five years. Chalraer's Life of
Mary Queen of Scots, i. 23.
- Crawford's Officers of State, p. 377.
MARY OF LORRAINE 43
to Frenchmen, and where that was not possible, retained
them as long as she could in her own hands, generally
for three whole years. Of all the benefices that fell
vacant from 1554 to 1559 the Lords declared that
scarce two had been filled by Scotsmen.1
It should be observed, however, that the Queen
Dowager had been brought into friendly relations with
the Protestants long before her assumption of the
Regency. She and Cardinal Beaton had each recog-
nised in the other a formidable rival ; and as Beaton
was French and Catholic in his sympathies, the
Dowager found it good policy to be English and
Protestant in hers. In this way there took shape a
distribution of forces, which remained undisturbed
down to the eve of the religious crisis. Angus and
the Assured Lords were the soul of the party which in
1544 had proclaimed Mary as Regent ; when she went to
France in 1550 she was accompanied by such chiefs of
the former English faction as Glencairn, Cassillis,
Maxwell, and Sir George Douglas ; the Lord James
Stewart, known to fame as the Regent Moray, began
his political career as her adherent ; Kirkcaldy of
Grange and Maitland of Lethington were prominent on
the same side ; Erskine of Dun, the friend of Wishart
and Knox, was one of the Scottish commissioners at
the Queen's marriage in 1558 ; and it was by consent
of the Protestants, vainly opposed by the prelates, that
the crown matrimonial was bestowed on the Dauphin.
Protestantism, or at all events the political party which
was more or less identified with Protestantism, thus
enjoyed the favour of the government, and it is not
surprising that during a period of eight years there
1 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the reign of Elizabeth,
1559-1560, Nos. 42, 45.
44 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
should have been no executions for heresy. When the
last victim perished in 1558, the Queen Regent pro-
fessed to have been ignorant of the tragedy. Arch-
bishop Hamilton, indeed, as Buchanan admits, was by
no means prone to bloodshed ; and the new religion,
living rather in the ballads sown broadcast throughout
the land than in the oratory of the pulpit, was less
obnoxious than formerly to the ecclesiastical authorities.
In this unobtrusive form, however, heretical opinions
were rapidly spreading ; and when Knox returned to
Scotland in 1555, after an absence of eight years, he
declared that Protestantism had made so great progress
that, unless he had seen it with his eyes, he could not
have believed it.1
In sowing dissension between Church and State the
war with England had undoubtedly prepared the way
for the Reformation ; but this result was really in-
volved in another of far wider and more decisive
import. The personal rivalry of Chatelherault and
the Queen Dowager does not at all obscure the fact
that Chatelherault stood for Scotland and the Dowager
for France ; and it was on the use which France should
make of the victory won in its interest, if not in its
name, that the future must necessarily depend. With
all her great gifts, the new Regent had to move in a
path which was none of her own choosing. England
and France had long been engaged in a struggle for
ascendency in Scotland ; and wrhen Mary of Lorraine
first comes prominently before us, the struggle had
entered on its last and its acutest phase. The infant
Queen was the object of contention to the two nations ;
and Henry II. , when the prize was borne towards him
on the issues of the strife, had no inducement to be
1 Hume Brown's Life of Knox, i. 293.
MARY OF LORRAINE 45
more disinterested than his late rival, Henry VIII. He
wished to bind the Scots closely to France, just as
Henry VIII. had sought to bind them to England.
At a later time the Constable Montmorency took the
king to witness that he had always opposed the marriage
of Mary to the Dauphin, " fearing thereby to make our
old friends our new enemies, as is like to come to pass
this day ; " l but his counsel must have been very
unpalatable, and was probably discounted as that of an
enemy to the house of Guise. That the Queen Dowager
should readily fall in with the designs of the Court is
only what was to be expected of a French princess,
whose position in Scotland was, indeed, singularly
isolated. As a Catholic, she could not really identify
herself with the Protestants, whilst, as the mother of
the Queen, she was at variance both with the Hamil-
tons and with the hierarchy, her natural ally, which
had a Hamilton for its primate. In such circumstances,
the policy of leaning upon France must have seemed to
her as natural as she soon found it to be disastrous.
Mary of Lorraine was far from being the reckless and
unscrupulous intriguer she has so often appeared to
those who have studied her through the eyes of Knox.
We have seen how she was led into an alliance with the
Protestants, not abruptly with a view to snatching away
the Regency, but as the result of circumstances which
first forced on her such an alliance, and then caused her
to adhere to it more and more closely. As she was not
a Scotswoman, and as Mary Stewart was to be the
sovereign of both realms, she doubtless believed that in
1 Sir James Melville's Memoirs, p. 78. On the ground that countries
ruled by lieutenants usually rebel, the Constable would have married
Mary to some duke or prince of France and sent them both to reside in
in Scotland, p. 72.
46 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
assimilating Scotland to France she was merely con-
solidating her daughter's inheritance ; and here too her
policy had its origin in the course of events. In the
last years of the war the Scots had been wholly
dependent on the support of their ally, and it was quite
natural that the Queen-Mother should place great
reliance on D'Oysel, the French ambassador, whom
Buchanan describes as well worthy of her confidence —
hasty and passionate, but withal a good and a capable
man, more attentive to equity than to the pleasure of
the Guises. The ambassador's authority, if not his
influence, ought to have ended with the war ; but
Mary, who had come to a definite understanding with
the French Court, continued to defer to him as her
chief adviser ; x and the nobles- were naturally indignant
that so much power should be wielded by the man, who
in the quaint words of the chronicler " presented the
king of France awen bodie at all counsallis and con-
ventiounes." 2 D'Oysel held no official position in Scot-
land, but several of his countrymen were invested with
offices of state which rendered them very obnoxious to
the people. De Roubay, a lawyer of Paris, had the
Great Seal in his keeping as vice-chancellor; De
Villemore was made a comptroller of the exchequer,
and De Boutot governor of Orkney. Of these foreign
officials, Buchanan tells us that De Roubay, owing to
his attempt to introduce French laws and customs, was
by far the most unpopular, but he adds that neither
this man nor D'Oysel wrought any mischief which
might not have been remedied. When the abbacies of
Melrose and Kelso became vacant in 1558, through the
1 D'Oysel left Scotland in 1551, but returned in 1554. Knox's Works,
i. 328, note.
2 Pitscottie, p. 513, " Ane man of singular guid judgment."
THE QUEEN'S MARRIAGE 47
death of James V.'s eldest illegitimate son, they were
assigned to the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Regent's brother.
A French garrison was placed in Dunbar Castle, and
also in a new fortress which D'Oysel had caused to be
built at Eyemouth ; and there was even a proposal for
the formation on the French model of a standing
army, but the scheme, though it is said to have been
favoured by some of the leading nobility, excited so
much discontent that it was hastily withdrawn. The
Scots had soon an opportunity of expressing in a
practical manner their disapproval of these unwelcome
innovations. In 1557 the Regent assembled an army
at Kelso with a view to assisting France, which was
threatened by the English and the Spaniards united
temporarily under the sceptre of Philip II. The nobles
had already assisted in certain Border forays, and they
declared themselves willing to repel any attack ; but
they absolutely refused to provoke war on a great scale
by an invasion of England. This was the last time that
Scotland was called upon to make the usual sacrifice on
behalf of her ancient ally.
As matters now stood in Scotland, it was evident that
France had become the true centre of gravity in her
political system ; and the outlook in that quarter was
by no means re-assuring. On the 24th of April, 1558,
the Queen of Scots was married to the Dauphin in the
Cathedral of Notre Dame. In the treaty of marriage
the Scottish commissioners had stipulated in the most
rigorous terms for the maintenance of the national
independence. Nevertheless, at the instigation of the
Guises, some ten days before the ceremony, Mary
secretly signed three documents, the substance of which
amounted to this : that, in the event of her death
without issue, the sovereignty of Scotland should be
48 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
vested in the King of France and his heirs ; that, if this
proved impracticable, the King of France should enjoy
the usufruct of the realm, until such time as he should
have been reimbursed in all sums expended by him in
Mary's defence and education ; and lastly, that all deeds
which might hereafter be signed by Mary in contraven-
tion of these pledges were null and void.
How far the real designs of the French Court were
appreciated in Scotland, it might be difficult to say.
We may think that a nation accustomed to the arrogant
bullying of England would be slow to detect insidious
attempts at dictation on the part of its traditional
ally ; but jealousy of France was no new thing in
Scottish history, and the country was not blind to many
slight indications of policy all pointing ominously in one
direction. The Scottish commissioners, although they
recognised the Dauphin as King of Scotland, refused to
agree that the regalia should be sent to Paris for the
purpose of crowning him ; and when four out of the
eight commissioners died before leaving France, their
deaths were not unnaturally attributed to poison.1 In
1559, on the accession of Francis and Mary to the
throne of both kingdoms, letters of naturalisation were
issued by the French Government in favour of all
1 There can be no question that only four of the eight commissioners
died, inasmuch as four, Lord James, Lord Seton, Erskine of Dun, and
Archbishop Beaton, lived to play a prominent part in subsequent history.
Yet the Lords of the Congregation, in a manifesto published a year after-
wards, assert that jive died and three returned home in safety. — Foreign
Calendar, 1559-60, No. 45. Hill Burton, strangely enough, says that
only six commissioners were sent (vol. iii. 289). He errs also in saying
that three of the commissioners died suddenly at Dieppe. Bishop Reid
of Orkney died on September 8th ; the Earl of Cassillis on November
18th ; the Earl of Eothes on November 28th ; and Lord Fleming, at
Paris, on December 18th. — Diet, of Nat. Biography, Article on Cassillis.
Bishop Panter of Ross was one of the commission, but he did not go to
France, and died in October, 1558. — Keith, i. 166.
FRENCH AGGRESSION 4£
Scottish subjects, and the Parliament of Paris in their
act of verification adopted a very superior tone.1 France
was represented in the guise of ancient Home dispensing
rights of citizenship to a subject people. Offence was
also given by the method adopted in quartering the
arms of Scotland with those of France, which was
thought to be derogatory to the national honour.
These various circumstances, trivial enough in them-
selves, were interpreted in the light of the Regent's
alien methods of government ; but even with this
invidious commentary, they might not have had much
weight in Scotland, if the French connexion had con-
tinued to be favourable to the new opinions. Influences,
however, were at work on both sides tending to make
this compromise no longer possible. Protestantism had
outgrown the limits of toleration, whilst at the same
time the consummation of the Queen's marriage and the
close of the English war enabled the government to-
assume a more independent attitude. That the Regent
had ever laid aside her repugnance to the new faith is
exceedingly improbable ; but justice requires us to
recognise that the Protestantism she strove to repress
in 1559 was something very different from the Protes-
tantism she had tolerated in 1554.
The existence of Protestantism in Scotland as a
separate communion dates from the return of Knox in
the autumn of 1555. Hitherto the Reformers had not
scrupled, for the most part, to be present at the
observances of the established religion ; but in conse-
quence of Knox's famous argument with Maitland on the
1 " Les roys de France, pour perpetuer leur domination, laquelle compte
desjk plus d'ans que PEmpire Romain, ont mieulx ayme laisser la rigeur
des anciens Grees et suyvre la doulceur et benignite des Remains." —
Teulet, Relations, etc., i. 316.
D
50 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
unlawfulness of countenancing the idolatrous Mass, they
now withdrew from the churches ; and in Kincardine-
shire they seem even to have taken an oath of mutual
support and fidelity. After pursuing his labours in
various parts of the country, Knox went back to Geneva
in the following summer ; and the clergy, who had
made a vain attempt to prosecute him as a heretic, burnt
him in effigy at the Cross of Edinburgh. The impetus
he had given to the religious movement sufficed to drive
it forward in his absence. In Scotland at that period,
and for long afterwards, there could be but one form of
faith. As avowed dissenters meeting privately for
worship, the Reformers must have been well aware that
they must either return to the Church or make an open
profession of the new opinions ; but as this last step
was equivalent to a declaration of war against the
established hierarchy, they did not adopt it without
considerable hesitation. In March, 1557, they wrote to
Knox at Geneva, entreating him to return, and declaring
that in the face of a hostile government they were
" ready to jeopard their lives and goods for the setting
forward of the glory of God." When Knox, in response
to this summons, had journeyed homeward as far as
Dieppe, he received word that his friends had repented of
their resolution, and could dispense for the present with
his services. In reply he rebuked them for their faint-
heartedness, charged them with conniving at the Regent's
attempt to subject the realm to " the slavery of
strangers," and exhorted them to set their hand to the
work of Reformation, " be it against kings or emperors."
This was in October ; and in the following December
Knox's exhortations bore fruit in the first Band or
Covenant, whereby the subscribers pledge themselves to
" establish the most blessed Word of God and his
MARTYRDOM OF MYLN 51
congregation," " forsake and renounce the congregation
of Satan," and " declare themselves manifestly enemies
thereto." The document was signed by the Earls of
Argyll, Glencairn, and Morton, Lord Lorn, Erskine of
Dun, and many others. Nothing could be plainer as a
manifesto of revolution ; and it probably went beyond
what was intended by the original promoters of the
aggressive movement, for the Lord James and Lord
Erskine, who signed the letter of invitation to Knox,
were not subscribers of the Covenant.1
The men, who thus defied the powers of Church and
State, were thoroughly in earnest. Wherever their
influence prevailed, they abolished the Mass and caused
the Prayer-Book of Edward VI. to be read on Sundays
by the priest, or, if he refused, by some competent
layman. In the spring of 1558 the ecclesiastical autho-
rities— though the Primate apparently was not active
in the matter — made an unfortunate attempt to intimi-
date their opponents by putting Walter Myln to death
at St. Andrews. Myln was a priest over eighty years
of age ; and according to the traditional account, they
had great difficulty in getting a judge to condemn him,
a rope to bind him, and faggots to burn him.2 Too
late to serve the purpose of its authors, the tragedy
only exasperated the enemies of the Church. Evan-
gelical preachers taught publicly in Edinburgh, Leith,
Dundee, and elsewhere ; and when several of them were
summoned for trial before the bishops, the barons of
the West appeared in arms at Holyrood, and presented
1 Knox's Works, i. 247-54, 267-74.
2 Pitscottie, pp. 520-522. Knox in one place says that Archbishop
Hamilton apprehended Myln and put him to death ; in another place he
lays all the blame on Bishop Hepburn of Moray — " By his counsel alone
was Walter Mylne our brother put to death."— Works, i. 308, 360.
52 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
a remonstrance, the reading of which they enforced by
putting on their steel bonnets in the royal presence.
Images were rudely handled ; that of St. Giles was
"drowned" in the North Loch, and then burnt; and a
procession of the clergy in honour of the Saint was
dispersed by the mob in the streets of Edinburgh.1
It is evident from this account that, before the
Regent attempted to suppress Protestantism, the Pro-
testants, for very sufficient reasons, had set themselves
to overturn the established religion. She still wished to
temporise, for the reformed movement had broken loose
before she was quite ready to dispense with its support.
The martyrdom of Myln was almost contemporaneous
with the Queen's marriage ; but the policy of the
Regent required for its completion that the crown
matrimonial, as the French called it, should be secured
to the Dauphin. Matters came to a crisis at the
meeting of Parliament on the 29th of November, 1558,
when the Reformers proposed to bring forward certain
articles of religion, and the surviving commissioners
intimated the Queen's desire that her husband should
have the crown. As the prelates, with Hamilton at
their head, strongly opposed this request, the Regent
made a supreme effort to conciliate the Protestants. By
skilfully playing on their hopes, she induced them to
discard their articles in favour of a protestation ; and
the religious controversy being thus averted, it was
agreed that the Dauphin should have the title of king
during his wife's life. Argyll and Lord James were
deputed to invest the prince with this coveted honour ;
1 The chronology of these events, which in Knox's History is very con-
fused, may best be studied in Calderwood's History of the Kirk and in
Lorimer's Scottish Reformation. Tytler, misled by Knox, represents the
episode of the steel bonnets (July, 1558) as leading up to the letter of
invitation to the Keformer (March, 1557).
ACCESSION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH 53
but events soon transpired which prevented their de-
parture.1
Of all the arguments in favour of crowning the
Dauphin, the one which had most weight with the
Parliament was a promise on the part of Henry II. to
support the Queen's claim on the English succession
after the death of Mary Tudor.2 Mary had died on the
17th November, and Elizabeth had already become
Queen of England. It was Elizabeth alone that stood
between the Queen-Dauphiness and the English crown ;
and if Elizabeth were illegitimate, as the Catholics
believed she was, the crown ought to have been hers.
Henry II. was not slow to redeem his promise. As
soon as Mary's death was known at Rome, his am-
bassador urged the Pope to disallow Elizabeth's title on
account of the nullity of her father's marriage with
Anne Boleyn ; and though this design miscarried
through the intervention of Spain, with which country,
in alliance with England, France was then at war, the
French boldly asserted Mary Stewart's title during the
negotiations at Cateau-Cambr^sis ; and they proclaimed
it still more offensively after the Peace. Francis and
Mary assumed the English arms, and the Dauphin, in
ratifying a separate treaty with Spain, subscribed himself
King of England.3 The French were encouraged in
these pretensions by the notorious weakness of their
rival. Calais had fallen at the beginning of the year.
When the news reached Scotland, the Dowager caused
bonfires to be lighted in every town, and recommended
Henry II. to attack Berwick, declaring that, if Berwick
1 Knox's Works, i. 309-14 ; Keith, i. 173, 174 ; Sir James Melville's
Memoirs, p. 73.
2 Dalrymple's Leslie (Scot. Text. Soc.), ii. 394 ; Calderwood, i. 417.
8 Froude, vii. 66.
54 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
were captured, the French might march unopposed to
London.1 At the accession of Elizabeth in November,
Berwick, though it required 4000 men to defend it, had
a garrison of only 240.2 The English border was at the
mercy of the Scottish moss-troopers, who rode from
town to town at night selling their protection to terri-
fied citizens in view of the approach of an imaginary
Scottish army. The French had some thoughts of
making a descent on the Isle of Wight, but they knew
well that this attempt, to be successful, must be sup-
ported by an invasion on the side of Scotland. Eliza-
beth, however, had declared for Protestantism ; and as
the Scottish Reformers were not likely to favour an
enterprise which had for its aim the establishment of
the Roman faith throughout the two kingdoms, their
suppression was to be the first object of the French
Court. After the Peace of Gateau- Cambre'sis, Henry
II. had begun to prosecute his own heretics, and he
wished the Queen Regent to deal summarily with hers.
It is to these influences from abroad that our his-
torians ascribe the rupture between Mary of Lorraine
and the Protestants, but their importance has probably
been over-rated. In the spring of 1559 the Sieur de
Be'thencourt was sent into Scotland to procure the
ratification of the Peace ; and according to Sir James
Melville, who as the confidant of the Constable Mont-
morency had some reason to know, he carried with him
instructions to the Regent to suppress the new religion,
" and to begin in time before the heretics should spread
any further, who by her gentle bearing had already
over great place, as was reported to the king of
France. . . . Whereat the Queen Regent appeared to be
1 Teulet, Relations Politiques, i. 300 ; Leslie, p. 264.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1558-59, Nos. 169, 170.
THE RELIGIOUS QUARREL 55
sorry."1 Melville adds that the first result of Be" then-
court's mission was a proclamation requiring all subjects
to participate with the Church in the observance of
Easter. It has been shown, however, that in so far as
this proclamation is concerned, Melville's account is at
variance with the facts ; for the Treaty of Gateau- Cam-
bre"sis was not concluded till the 2nd of April, whereas
Easter fell that year on the 29th of March, and more-
ever the Act of Oblivion, which was passed at the end
of the struggle, is reckoned from the 6th of that month.2
Obviously, then, the Regent had begun to oppose the
Reformation before the arrival of Be"thencourt's em-
bassy ; and if she was dissatisfied with the policy
of the French Court, it must have been with the
methods suggested, not the object. These probably
were unscrupulous enough. At all events, when new
envoys came over in September, they advocated the
most sanguinary measures, such as a massacre of the
nobility and a general conflagration of heretics, and
against these measures both the Regent and D'Oysel
did certainly remonstrate.3 Mary's disposition towards
the Reformers must necessarily have been profoundly
modified, when they took the offensive in December,
1557, and probably from this period she secretly sup-
ported the hierarchy, as far as her daughter's interests
would permit. It is remarkable that as early as March,
1558, Archbishop Hamilton in writing to Argyll de-
clared that he had incurred the displeasure of the Regent
through his want of severity towards the heretics ; 4
1 Sir James Melville's Memoirs, pp. 76, 77.
2 M'Crie's Life of Knox, i. 432, 433. Melville's chronology, as M'Crie
justly remarks, is utterly unreliable. A flagrant example of this is to
be found on pp. 72, 73 of his Memoirs.
3 Foreign Calendar, 1560-61, No. 619 ; Buchanan, iii. 128.
4 Knox's Works, i. 279.
56 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION, 1550-1559
and possibly — though of this there is no evidence — the
execution of Myln in the following April was instigated
by her as an answer to the Protestant challenge.
The Lords of the Congregation afterwards declared
that the Dowager had encouraged them to compromise
themselves with the Church, and then, when she no
longer required their support against the Hamiltons,
had united with the Church to suppress them as heretics
and traitors. To this she might very well have replied
that she tolerated the religion of the Reformers so long
as they continued to tolerate hers, and indeed for more
than a year longer. Had she denounced the Protestant
Band as a dissolution of the alliance and at once
declared war, her conduct would have been irreproach-
able : it is the year of waiting, during which she dis-
guised her hostility with a view to securing the marriage
of her daughter and the crown matrimonial for the
Dauphin, that tells most heavily against her. But for
us of to-day these party recriminations are of little
moment. Reformation history has been so blighted
and disfigured by invidious personalities that we are
apt to exaggerate the influence of individuals on the
issues at stake. Fire and water were not more irrecon-
cilable than the old religion and the new, and the
concessions made on either side were intended merely to
postpone the inevitable conflict On the one hand,
Mary, in the interest of the French ascendency, had
protected Protestantism till it was strong enough to
defy both Church and State ; on the other hand, the
Protestants, in order to secure her protection, had
helped to establish a system of government, which they
afterwards denounced in the strongest terms as in-
jurious to the honour and the independence of Scotland.
CHAPTER II.
THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560.
EVERYTHING now pointed to a rupture between the
Government and the Protestants, and Archbishop
Hamilton was quick to anticipate the Regent's change
•of policy. In the last days of 1558, when the business
of the French marriage had been finally adjusted, he
summoned several of the preachers to answer for their
conduct at St. Andrews, whereupon, says a contem-
porary chronicle, " the brethren . . . caused inform the
Queen Regent that the said preachers would appear
with such multitude of men professing their doctrine as
was never seen before in such like cases in this country.
!Then the Queen, fearing some uproar or sedition, desired
the Bishop to continue the matter." l Soon afterwards
a Provincial Council met at Edinburgh, and the Regent
showed her sympathy with its proceedings by causing
several of the statutes to be proclaimed at the market
orosses — in particular, one which forbade any person
under pain of death to preach or to administer the
sacrament without authority from the bishop. The
Reformers paid no regard either to this proclamation or
to the one enforcing the observance of Easter ; and the
1 " History of the Estate of Scotland " : Wodrow Miscellany, i. 51-85.
58 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
townspeople of Perth gave defiance to the Government
by openly embracing the new religion. This last occur-
rence exasperated the Regent ; and after some hesitation
due to the threats and entreaties of the Protestant
leaders, she summoned four of the preachers to appear
at Stirling on the 10th of May. The Regent having
thus supported the Primate in his original intention, the
Reformers adhered to theirs ; and a body of five or six
thousand men, though without arms, assembled at Perth
in support of the accused ministers. In order to stay
the advance of this peaceable host, Mary spoke plausibly
to their envoy, Erskine of Dun, of taking " some better
order " ; and then, when the preachers failed to appear
on the day fixed, she put them to the horn, thinking, no
doubt, that their readiness to appear in this very
questionable shape was a much more heinous offence
than if they had declined to appear at all.1
The Reformers at Perth, who had interpreted the
allusion to " some better order " as a cancelling of the
summons, believed themselves duped ; and Erskine's
denunciations of the royal deceit having put a fresh
edge on the usual sermons against idolatry, " the rascal
multitude " inaugurated the Reformation in the shape
best known to the general reader by pulling down the
Charterhouse and the dwellings of the Black and Grey
Friars. The leaders appear to have been somewhat
1Knox, Works, i. 316-319. Sir James Crofts, writing from Berwick to
the English Government, says, " The Regent commanded these preachers
to appear before her at Stirling, and they being accompanied with a train
of 5,000 or 6,000 persons, the Regent dismissed the appearance, putting the
preachers to the horn." — Foreign Calendar, 1558-1559, No. 710. That this
was the reason of the Regent's action there can be no doubt, but
apparently it was not the pretext. The English Government was not very
accurately informed. Knox is said to have been preaching at Dundee,
instead of at Perth ; and in another letter (No. 840) the outbreak of the
troubles is said to have been at Dumfries.
RETURN OF KNOX 59
scandalised by these excesses, to which, however, they
were soon so completely reconciled as to sanction similar
outrages in all parts of the Lowlands. Mary was
naturally indignant, for the Charterhouse was the noblest
building of the kind in Scotland, the foundation and the
burial-place of James the First ; and the Reformers
probably aggravated her wrath by publishing four
manifestoes, addressed to herself, D'Oysel and the
French officers, the Nobility, and the Prelates. In the
first three of these they represent themselves as loyal
subjects whom persecution had rendered mutinous, and,
if it continued, might make rebels ; but in the last they
speak of the clergy as " the generation of Antichrist, the
pestilent Prelates and their shavelings," and threaten
them as idolaters with " that same war which God
commanded Israel to execute against the Canaanites."
Thus they promised obedience on condition that they
should be allowed to destroy the abbeys and overturn
the established religion.
John Knox had returned from the Continent just in
time to take part in these opening scenes at Perth,
having landed at Leith on the 2nd of May, 1559. A
work such as this must necessarily have something to say
on the character and influence of this extraordinary man ;
but the subject will be treated more appropriately at a
later stage ; for Knox, though a born revolutionary, was
called by destiny to be a builder rather than a destroyer.
His personality was too overpowering not to make
itself felt at every stage of his career ; but he embodied
in himself the religious principle which co-operated with
many other forces to establish the revolution ; and it
was not till this principle had parted company with its
political and social allies that his influence could become
supreme and distinct. In other words, though merely a
€0 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
leading agent, and not the most important, in the
triumph of the Reformation, he was, in a sense, the
founder of the Reformed Church.
The details of the struggle do not fall to be recorded
here, except in so far as they may be necessary to
illustrate a few of its outstanding features. It is re-
markable that for the first five months, though on three
occasions hostilities were with difficulty averted, the
quarrel was entirely bloodless, being no more than a
war of manifestoes backed by displays of force and
interrupted temporarily by agreements, which the
Regent was persistently accused of having violated.
Mary of Lorraine has become notorious as a truce-
breaker. That she was no novice in the art of dissimu-
lation is evident from Sir Ralph Sadler's report of his
interview with her in 1543 ;x but in her dealings with
the Reformers, apart from the words attributed to her
by Knox, which must always be of questionable authen-
ticity, and in some cases are either plainly false or out-
rageously improbable, she seems at the worst to have
sought refuge in language, which, though it may have
been intended to convey a false impression, was not
necessarily inconsistent with her subsequent conduct.
Unlike Charles the First, she had no scruples which
could prevent her being politic, but, like him, she was
not strong enough to be faithfully conscientious,2 though
it was her position that was weak, not her character.
The Reformers, indeed, did not always adhere to their
1 She also forged a letter in Chatelherault's name to Francis II. in order
to compromise him with the English. Teulet printed it as " une nouvelle
preuve de la faiblesse de caractere et de 1'irresolution du due du Chatelle-
rault." — Relations Polittgues, i. 406. But the Dowager admits the forgery
in a letter to the Cardinal. — Foreign Calendar, 1559-1560, No. 906.
2 " Too conscientious to be politic, hardly strong enough to be faithfully
conscientious." — Stubbs on Charles I.
ICONOCLASM 61
side of the bargain ; 1 and while loudly complaining of
broken treaties, they persisted in a course of conduct
which made all compromise impossible. In the space of
six weeks many of the noblest ecclesiastical buildings
had been pulled to the ground. The Charterhouse at
Perth ; St. Andrews Cathedral, the largest church in
the country, which had been 160 years in building,
which Bruce had seen consecrated and which he had
endowed in gratitude for the victory of Bannockburn ;
Scone Abbey, where for centuries the kings of Scotland
had been crowned ; Cambuskenneth, and monasteries of
lesser fame in every part of the Lowlands — all had met
the same fate ; and such was the senseless fury of the
mob, that in many cases they not only pulled down the
cloisters, but even hacked and uprooted the trees in the
convent gardens.2 Attempts have been made to mini-
mise these excesses on the ground that Protestantism at
this period was so weak that Knox's denunciations of
idolatry could not have had the influence attributed to
them.3 The argument is at variance with the facts, but
even on a priori grounds it is entirely inconclusive.
Protestantism was indeed weak, as we shall see ; but
the spirit of contempt for the Church, which a word
from Knox could inflame into iconoclasm, had diffused
itself through the whole body of the people. The voice
was the voice of Knox, but the hand was Sir David
Lindsay's.
Although the Congregation, as the Protestants now
called themselves, vehemently repudiated the charge of
rebellion, their proceedings were obviously incapable
1 See Wodrow Miscellany, i. 66.
2 Leslie, pp. 272, 275. The Queen Kegent noticed this as " encore plus
inhumain." — Teulet, i. 328.
3 Joseph Kobertson in Quarterly Review, Ixxxv.
62 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
of any other interpretation ; and the question was set
at rest on the 29th of June, when they entered Edin-
burgh in triumph, driving the Regent before them,
seized the palace of Holy rood, and on pretence of
stopping the issue of debased coins, took possession of
the Mint. It was no secret to Mary that they had
begun to correspond with agents of the English Govern-
ment ; and an event soon occurred which greatly in-
tensified the quarrel by strengthening the French
ascendency and making it at the same time more
obnoxious to England. On the 10th of July Henry II.
was cut off in the flower of his age as the result of an
accident in the tiltyard. According to Sir James
Melville, he had resolved on a change of policy in
Scotland — to throw over the Church and to " commit
Scotismen's saules unto God " ; l but Francis and Mary,
who now succeeded to the throne of the two kingdoms,
had no such intention, and the Guises were resolved to
root out heresy with a view to enforcing the claim of
their niece to the English crown. From this point
matters slowly, but surely, drifted into war. Assured
of reinforcements from France, the Regent began to
fortify Leith as a base of supplies, whilst the Congrega-
tion, relying, though with much less confidence, on
Elizabeth, ventured to take firmer ground. As early as
the 13th of August they let Cecil understand that they
were waiting only for a specific understanding with
England to depose Mary from the Regency;2 and this
step, professedly in the name of the absent sovereigns,,
was actually taken on the 23rd of October.
It was at this time that the rebels gained an accession
to their ranks of the highest possible value in the
1 Memoirs, p. 80.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1558-1559, No. 1186.
THE FRENCH FORCE 63
person of Maitland of Lethington, the Queen Regent's
Secretary of State.1 Even those, who think most un-
favourably of Maitland's subsequent career, will hardly
deny that on this occasion he was justified in changing
sides. An avowed Protestant, he had entered the
Regent's service at a time when she was on good terms
with the reformed religion ; he vehemently resented her
anti-national policy ; and he was so odious, as a heretic,
to the more extreme of the French Catholics that the
Bishop of Amiens is said to have sought his life. He
now became the political head of the Congregation, and
their negotiations with England were conducted almost
entirely by him. Of Maitland it will be necessary to
say much in another place ; and if his name does not
occur very frequently in the course of the present
chapter, it is only because his policy during this period
—the most prosperous, though not the most interesting
of his career — was identical in all respects with that of
the Protestant party.
The deposition of the Regent was equivalent to a
declaration of war ; and it will be worth our while
to compare roughly the strength of the opposing forces.
When the contest began in May, 1559, the Regent
had 2,000 troops at her disposal, 500 of which were
Scottish soldiers in the pay of France, and the rest
French ; but as many of the latter were Huguenots,
their temper was by no means reliable. In August
she received a reinforcement of 1,000 men, and in
the course of the next five months contingents arrived
at various times, amounting in all to about another
1,000. The whole French army in Scotland never at
any time exceeded 4,000, and the number actually
1 Calderwood says that Maitland " conveyed himself out of Leith a little
before Alhallow Eve." — History of the Kirk, i. 553.
64 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
landed in English ships at Calais at the close of the
war was returned as S^OO.1 The troops of the Con-
gregation, though on many occasions far more
numerous, were a very fluctuating body ; but in
almost all the elements that make for success in
civil war the Protestants had an immense advantage.
The Lord James and Argyll, who at first discoun-
tenanced the movement, joined it at the beginning of
June ; in July they received assurances of support,
and in August a large sum of money from England.
In September the Earl of Arran, Chatelherault's eldest
son, who had fled from France to escape a prosecution
for heresy, was smuggled across the Border by Cecil.
This was the person whom Henry VIII. had once
thought of as a husband for Elizabeth. Hints were
now thrown out that the scheme might be revived ;
and henceforward the whole weight of the Hamilton
faction, except, of course, the Archbishop, who re-
mained loyally at his post, was thrown on the
Protestant side. In November information reached
London that of all the nobility the Earl of Bothwell
and the Lords Borthwick and Seton alone adhered to
the Regent.2
In spite, however, of this assured position con-
tinually increasing in strength the Protestants betrayed
from the first a most remarkable lack of energy arid
determination. When they entered Edinburgh in arms
on the 29th of June, they had evidently gone too far to
recede, and their object ought to have been to bring
the matter at once to a decisive issue. D'Oysel had
retreated before them to Dunbar ; and such was the
condition of his troops — all of them discontented for
1 Foreign Calendar, 1560-1561, No. 389, note.
8 Ibid. 1559-1560, No. 234.
WEAKNESS OF THE PROTESTANTS 65
lack of pay and the Huguenots in open mutiny — that
he had serious thoughts of giving up the struggle and
retiring to France.1 Nevertheless, in the space of three
weeks, he found himself strong enough to make a night
march on Leith ; and the Lords of the Congregation
were forced into a treaty, by which they agreed to
evacuate the capital, and even to suspend for a time
their hostility to the Mass and the religious houses.
The Lords were unceasing in their appeals for aid to
England ; and Cecil was justly indignant that they
did so little to help themselves. Vainly had he
warned them that an army was being raised against
them in France, vainly exhorted them to drive out
the few foreign troops then in Scotland and to secure
the seaports, so that the newcomers, having no friends
to welcome them, might not be able to effect a
landing.2 The advent of Arran, from which great
things were expected in London, did nothing ap-
parently to stimulate their efforts. They contented
themselves with verbal protests, when the Regent
began to fortify Leith, deplored their inability to
raise a force in time of harvest, and then, when the
works were completed, declared them so strong that
they could not hazard an assault. Five months of
purposeless inactivity, neither war nor peace, had
greatly improved the position of the Queen Regent,
who had received reinforcements, and had a port
ready to receive more; and when hostilities broke out
1 Teulet, Relations Politiquet, i. 330, 331.
2 " Will ye hear of a strange army coming by seas to invade you, and
aeek help against the same, and yet permit your adversaries, whom ye may
»xpel, keep the landing and strength for the others ? Which of these two
is easiest, to weaken one number first, or three afterward 1 Surely what
moveth this to be forborne, I know not." — Cecil to the Lords of the Con-
gregation, July 28th, 1558. Foreign Calendar, 1558-1559, No. 1086.
E
66 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
late in the autumn, the Congregation fared very badly.
On the 6th of November, after several unsuccessful
skirmishes, they were signally defeated in the suburbs
of Edinburgh ; and the same night they abandoned
the city, amid the jeers of the populace, in such haste
and confusion that they left their artillery standing
in the streets. After this the French wrought their
pleasure throughout the country, until the English
fleet came north in January.
In explanation of this long record of failure on the
part of the Congregation, it has usually been thought
sufficient to say that the Scottish troops were inferior in
discipline to the French, and that, being merely feudal
levies, they could not remain in the field for more than
three weeks at a time. These reasons, though pertinent
enough, are hardly satisfactory. Even at the worst, a
feudal force is capable of periodic renewal ; and the
Lords had always a considerable body of mercenaries
hired with their own and with English money. Ten
years had not elapsed since the nation had been at
death-grips with the southern invader, and of the
soldiers trained to arms in that desperate conflict the
great majority must still have been available for service.
Before the fortifications of Leith were completed, the
Queen Regent was not at all formidable ; and the
Protestant leaders, knowing the nature of their force
and the advantage which every day wasted gave
to their opponents, had every reason to act with
vigour.
The truth is — and almost every page of contemporary
history bears witness to the fact — that the Lords of the
Congregation profoundly distrusted their own cause.
Protestantism was undoubtedly weak, both in the
measure of support it received throughout the country
WEAKNESS OF THE PROTESTANTS 67
and in the temper of many of its professed adherents.1
It was a growing force in some of the towns, eight of
which are said to have been provided with pastors
before September, 1559 ;2 but it had absolutely no hold
on the peasantry, and the nobles, who almost all pro-
fessed the new faith for reasons peculiar to themselves,
were feebly supported by their vassals. In the absence
of any strong popular feeling, the feudal levies proved
thoroughly inefficient ; the men came in in scant
numbers and dispersed again on the first opportunity.
After the deposition of the Regent, when the quarrel
had plainly become irreconcilable, a spirit of misgiving
pervaded the Congregation, which, on the first serious
reverse, became undisguised panic. " The ministers of
God's Word ceased not daily to preach and to exhort
according to their duty, but the most part apparently
took no great care of God's Word, for they began to
weary, perceiving the matter to be difficult, and to draw
to length."3 The most secret plans of the rebels were
betrayed to the enemy, and they strongly suspected the
traitors to be of their own number ; the mercenaries
mutinied ; the Duke began to tremble for his head, and
his trembling infected many others. " Men did so steal
away," says Knox, " that the wit of man could not stay
them."4 '
1 " L'imruense majorite de la population, dans toutes des classes, s'etait
detach6e de 1'ancienne religion, ou plut6t de la hierarchic, sans veritable
enthousiasme pour la foi nouvelle. Elle etait pre"te a 1'accepter, voire k
piller pour elle eglises et moiiasteres ; elle n'etait pas prete & faire pour
elle des sacrifices considerables." "Sans doute, la reiorme religieuse
n'etait pas pour les ^cossais d'alors une question nationale." — Philippson,
Histoire du Regne de Marie Stuart, ii. 170, 171.
2M'Crie's Life of Knox, i. 284.
3 Wodrow Miscellany, i. 70. See also Buchanan.
4 Works, i. 464 ; Spottiswoode's History, i. 306.
68 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
There is little trace here of that enthusiasm and
tenacity of purpose which we are wont to associate with
the idea of a religious war ; and the Lords were so
entirely sceptical as to the power of Protestantism to
win them support that they sought more and more to
shift the course of the dispute into another channel. In
all their later manifestoes they appealed to their country-
men as patriots rather than as religious zealots. They
even took pains to show that, the oppression of the
French being exercised on Papists and Protestants
alike, religion could not be the main issue at stake.1
Again and again, with wearisome reiteration, they
expatiated on the conspiracy of the Queen Regent and
the French Court to extinguish the liberties and inde-
pendence of Scotland, and to reduce the country to a
province of France. That they were right in this con-
tention cannot be denied ; but we may reasonably
doubt whether the evidence then available was sufficient
to give force to their arguments with the nation at
large. Distrust of France had, indeed, long been
sapping an alliance which was the growth of centuries,
but in the absence of any palpable act of aggression the
process could proceed but slowly. One would suppose,
too, that these asseverations of patriotic fervour must
have sounded somewhat hollow in the mouths of the
Protestant lords. They were the representatives of a
party which in recent years had shown itself singularly
obtuse to the dictates of the national honour — a party
which had incited Hertford to his merciless devastations,
and which, even in the dark days after Pinkie, had
offered to take service with the English invader.2
Several of the leaders of the Congregation had been in
the pay of Henry VIII. Kirkcaldy of Grange had been
1 Spottiswoode, i. 296. 2 Tytler, vi., Appendix ii.
• APATHY OF THE NATION 69
one of Beaton's assassins ; and Cockburn of Ormiston,
whom Bothwell intercepted on his way from Berwick
with a supply of English money, had acted a far more
odious part as an agent in Henry's schemes for " the
killing of the Cardinal." The return of England to
Catholicism under Mary Tudor had, indeed, dissevered
Scottish Protestantism from its unpatriotic tradition ;
but the Lords had compromised themselves in another
quarter. They denounced the Queen Regent for the
alien character of her government, and it was mainly
through their concurrence that such a government had
been established. In one of their manifestoes, for
example, they reproached the Dowager with having
supplanted Chatelherault in the Regency, and with
having bribed the nobility to consent to her design,1
though it was notorious that the Protestants on that
occasion had been her best friends, and if anyone was
bribed, it was most probably themselves. No doubt, in
their compliance with the Regent's French policy, the
Reformers had acted only as practical politicians, who
make concessions in one quarter in order to obtain them
in another ; but the people in every age and country
has had a craving for consistency in its statesmen, and
the antecedents of the Protestant lords could not fail to
weaken their position as champions of the national
freedom against the tyranny of France.
In whatever way we may attempt to account for it,
the small part played by the nation at large in this
crisis of its political and religious history is very
remarkable. Both the contending factions were
dependent on external support, and the matter seems
to have been regarded in Scotland as little more than
a personal quarrel between the Regent and the nobility.
1 Foreign Calendar, 1559-1560, No. 42.
70 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
Had Mary been able to enlist more native troops, she
would probably have done so, but the number of Scots
in her service seems actually to have diminished. In
May, 1560, it was reported that the French "cannot
get past six score Scots in wages " ; and after the
surrender of Leith the English had great difficulty in
protecting the garrison from the fury of the mob. On
the other hand, Knox declared at the outbreak of the
war that the Lords made no progress with their levies,
partly indeed for lack of money, but also " because men
have no will to hazard." Even Randolph, the English
agent, who in general speaks very favourably of the
Scots, thought it " great discontentation for a man to
travail where so little love to God is or zeal to their
country." At the beginning of 1560 it was believed in
London that, if the neutrals of Lothian and Berwick-
shire could be induced to declare for the Congregation,
the latter would be more than a match for the French.
These people were supposed to be waiting for English
intervention ; but England, at all events amongst the
lower classes, seems to have been only one degree less
unpopular than France. When Elizabeth's army had
been some time in Scotland, Lord Grey of Wilton com-
plained that he could get no Scot to serve with him
either for love or money ; and the English wounded
were fain to lie in the streets of Edinburgh because the
citizens refused, even for payment, to receive them into
their houses. It was evident, however, from the first
that, without English intervention, the Protestant move-
ment must inevitably collapse ; and Knox admitted
this more than once in his correspondence with Cecil.1
1 Foreign Calendar, 1559-1560, Nos. 138, 683, 1056; 1560-1561, Nos. 28,
46, 323. " If the English lie as neutrals, what will be the end he (Cecil)
may easily conjecture." — Knox to Cecil, August 6, 1559.
POLICY OF ELIZABETH 71
The position of Elizabeth, who was a party to the
great European treaty of Cateau-Cambre'sis in April,
1559, and had concluded a separate peace with Scotland
only a few days after the troubles there began, was a
very difficult one. In so far as the Reformers were
rebels, she had no wish to countenance them ; and the
Scottish Reformation was overshadowed in her eyes by
the obnoxious personality of Knox and Goodman, both
of whom had written against "the monstrous Regiment
of Women,'/' and had adopted the teaching of Calvin
that rebellion against an ungodly sovereign was not
merely justifiable, but a religious duty. On the other
hand, she could not reasonably risk war with France on
behalf of insurgents, who had not so far committed
themselves that they might not at any moment become
her enemy's loyal subjects. The policy she adopted
was the outcome of these conflicting interests. She
strove to embitter the dispute, and encouraged the
Scots to throw off the Regent's authority, with reserva-
tion of their duty to their sovereign, whilst at the same
time in the Earl of Arran she sent them a leader, whose
right of succession to the crown and hope of marriage
with herself covered the nakedness of rebellion with
some show of dynastic policy. The collapse of the
Protestant movement in November showed that furtive
supplies of money were powerless to ensure its success ;
and Elizabeth under the guidance of Cecil, who firmly
believed that the Scots at this crisis were England's
first line of defence, ventured, after some hesitation, to
act more boldly. Maitland, whom the Lords sent to
plead their cause in London, was cordially received by
the Queen. In January, 1560, a fleet was despatched
to Leith to intercept the reinforcements which the
Regent expected from France ; and on the 27th of
72 / THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
February a treaty was concluded at Berwick, which
pledged the Queen to still more decisive measures.'- The
treaty was signed by the Duke of Norfolk in name of
Elizabeth, and by certain commissioners in name of the
Duke of Chatelherault, second person of the Realm of
Scotland and statutory heir to the crown, as well as of
the other Protestant lords. Elizabeth agreed to send
an army into Scotland to avert the conquest of that
country by France, and the Scots on their part promised
assistance to England in the event of a French invasion.
They obtained this boon " only for preservation of them
in their old freedoms and liberties and from conquest " ;
and England promised never to desert them in the hour
of danger " as long as they shall acknowledge their
Sovereign Lady and Queen, and shall endeavour them-
selves to maintain the liberty of their country and the
estate of the Crown of Scotland." Thus did Elizabeth
seek to lay the spectre of rebellion ; and the sentiment
of nationality, which had so long held England and
Scotland at mortal defiance, was converted at last into a
bond of union.1
The Treaty of Berwick makes no mention of religion ;
and indeed, though it saved the Reformation, it has in
other respects a deeper and a more abiding interest.
Cecil was no stranger to that idea of a united Britain,
which Edward I. had rudely attempted to realise, and
which Henry VIII. in all his dealings with Scotland had
kept steadily in view. " This one thing I covet," he
wrote to the Duke of Chatelherault, " to have this isle
well united in concord, and then could I be content to
leave my life and the joy thereof to our posterity." 2
But Cecil, though he was true to Henry's ideal, was
1 Keith, i. 258-262, where the Treaty is printed in full.
2 Sadler, State Papers, i. 405.
TREATY OF BERWICK 73
wise enough to profit by his failure. Personally he
believed in the feudal superiority of the English crown,
and even suggested it privately to his mistress as a
ground of intervention in Scotland ; but not a word
was said on this subject at Berwick, and the claim
henceforward dropped into oblivion, never again to be
seriously revived. The conduct of the Scottish com-
missioners, one of whom was Maitland of Lethington,
showed, indeed, that in their opinion nothing could
really secure the future of their country which did not
vindicate its past. Eefusing to treat on English ground,
they met Elizabeth's agents on benches erected in the
middle of the Tweed, and through their excessive
punctiliousness the negotiations were actually com-
pleted on the Scottish side of the river.1 Henry VIII.
had required that the strongholds of Scotland should be
delivered into his hands during the minority of Mary
Stewart ; but now it was stipulated that whatever for-
tresses the English might win from the French should
be either demolished or given up to the Protestant
lords, and that they should raise no new fortifications
without consent of the estates. When we consider the
extreme weakness of the Protestant party at this period
and the character of its former relations with England,
these facts may well impress us as an eloquent testimony
to the success of the struggle against Henry VIII. and
Somerset. The work had been toilsome and bloody,
but it did not require to be done again.
In the modest British fashion our ancestors sought to
signalise the importance of the Berwick treaty. Eliza-
beth's army, 7,000 strong, entered Scotland at the end
1 Burton, iii. 367. Burton represents the coming of the fleet as a result
of the Treaty of Berwick. In reality, the fleet had been in the Forth
since the 15th of January.
74 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
of March ; and when the combined army advanced to
the assault of Leith on the 7th of May, it was required
that each Scot of gentle blood should take an English-
man of like degree by the hand.1 Thus " at last,
though long, our jarring notes agreed " ; nor could the
new and better day have been more happily inaugurated
than by Scotsmen and Englishmen going hand in hand
into battle against a foreign foe.
The Treaty of Berwick might be of good augury for
the future, but it seemed to have involved England in a
very thankless task. Lord Grey had not advanced
further than Prestonpans when he heard that Elizabeth,
influenced by the arrival of Monluc, Bishop of Valence,
to mediate between the Dowager and the rebels, was
anxious to have the matter settled without bloodshed,
whilst Norfolk, the Queen's Lieutenant on the Borders,
exhorted him " both in that sort and in further order of
expedition." 2 To add to his vexation at these contra-
dictory orders, he was disappointed in his allies. He
found the nobility " painful and willing," but too weak
to be of any real service, and the common people so ill-
disposed that, as we have seen, he could not get them to
serve with him either for love or money. The French,
indeed, played into his hands by making two vigorous
sallies, in the first of which they were repulsed and in
the second victorious ; but it was not till the " abusing,
dissembling treaty" had been discarded through the
Bishop's failure in his project of mediation that a
general assault was ordered on the 7th of May, and
then, in spite of the happy incident just referred to, it
was repulsed with a loss to the assailants of more than
1 Foreign Calendar ; 1560-61, No. 37. Intercepted letter of the Dowager
to D'Oysel.
2 Ibid., 1559-60, Nos. 948, 950.
DEATH OF MARY OF LORRAINE 75
1,000 men. Meanwhile, Philip of Spain had been
threatening to intervene ; and this caused great alarm
to several of Elizabeth's ministers, particularly to Dr.
Wotton, who declared it had never been intended that
the English alone should drive out the French ; and
now, in the helplessness of the Scots, they might have
the Spaniards on their hands as well.1 Elizabeth, how-
ever, disbelieved in the Spanish scare ; the defeat of the
7th stiffened her resolution, and resulted only in the
moving up of reinforcements from Berwick. The
French fought most gallantly ; but their provisions
were running short, the troops which ought to have
doubled the strength of the garrison had perished at sea
in the previous December, and Philip's schemes came to
nothing with the destruction of his navy by the Turks.
A few days before the baffled assault, the French
Government, unable to send further succour and
threatened with a rising of the Huguenots, had sent
over De Randan to treat for peace. Elizabeth had no
desire to prolong a war which had opened so poorly ;
and Cecil and Wotton were sent down to discuss pre-
liminaries with Randan and Monluc, first at Newcastle,
and then at Berwick.
They had not been three days at work when news
reached them from Scotland that the French cause had
lost by far its ablest and its most devoted champion.
Mary of Lorraine had long been in failing health. In
April she was far gone with dropsy ; and on the
approach of the English army Lord Erskine offered her
an asylum in the Castle of Edinburgh, which he held in
the Queen's name against both the belligerents. Though
her life was fast ebbing away, the Dowager worked on
with unfailing energy to the last, animating the garrison
1 Foreign Calendar, 1559-60, No. 985.
76 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
of Leith to sustained effort, and appealing for succour to
her brothers in France. The Scots declared she did
more harm than 500 Frenchmen; and Throckmorton,
writing from Blois only three days before her death,
urged Cecil for God's sake to have her removed from
the Castle, for " she hath the heart of a man of war."
On the 8th of June she was visited at her own request
by several of the Protestant leaders. In broken
utterances she besought them not to judge her harshly,
to believe that, though loyal to France, she had sought
the good of Scotland too ; and then, feeling her utter
loneliness, she prayed them not to be far from her while
she lived. Thus two days passed ; and on the morning
of the llth the booming of minute guns from the
batteries at Leith announced that the end had come.
The death of the unbending Dowager removed the
chief obstacle to peace, for the French commissioners,
though invested with very large powers, had been
instructed to defer on all points to her decision. On
the 17th the diplomatists on both sides met in con-
ference in Edinburgh. The purely military question
gave rise to little difficulty ; but, though the French
were quite prepared to surrender Leith and to withdraw
from the kingdom, Cecil was determined not to let them
go until he had extorted from them at least two political
concessions. One of these was so important in itself
and was obtained in so ample and explicit a manner,
that we can well believe Cecil's statement that it was
the fruit of much bitter contention. Monluc and
Randan consented that Francis and Mary should not
only recall all public documents stamped with the arms
of England, but should abstain from using the said
arms "in all times coming" — a provision which might
be read so as to bar Mary's claim to the English
NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE 77
crown on the death of Elizabeth. There remained,
however, another and a still more serious difficulty.
Cecil demanded the insertion of a clause to the effect
that nothing in 'the treaty then in progress should be
interpreted to the prejudice of the Treaty of Berwick,
this being the most effective way of securing the safety
of the Protestants, and being also a tacit avowal of that
extinction of French influence in Scotland, which had
long been a principal object of the Tudor policy. The
latter reason would have been enough to make the
proposed clause odious to the French, even if there had
not been the further objection that Francis and Mary
could hardly be expected to recognise the right of their
subjects to enter into treaty with a foreign power ; and
indeed Monluc and Randan had been specially instructed
not to suffer any allusion to the Anglo- Scottish alliance.
On this point, then, the negotiations broke down — a
suggestion that the clauses of mutual protection in the
Berwick treaty might be interpreted as between the
French and English sovereigns being rejected by the
Frenchmen on the ground that they had no authority
" to make any such new league." On the 2nd of July
Cecil and Wotton wrote a long letter to the Queen, in
which they informed her that the conference was at an
end, and that they had sent instructions to Norfolk to
advance with the main army from Berwick. The letter
had been sealed, but not despatched, when Cecil made
a final endeavour to conciliate the French ; and writing
again the same night he announced the success of his
effort. The French commissioners, as the result of a
separate negotiation, had granted a long list of con-
cessions to the Scots ; they consented that they should
appear in the treaty as made to the Scots at the inter-
cession of Elizabeth, and that Francis and Mary should
78 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
promise to fulfil their obligations, provided that the
Scots on their part performed theirs. Thus the link
between England and Scotland was recognised impli-
citly, if not in words ; and Cecil wrote complacently to
his mistress that " content with the kernel, he had
granted the shell to the French to play withal." l
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of
this memorable treaty, which not only secured indirectly
the triumph of the Reformation in Scotland, but laid
the foundation of an empire which has survived the
wreck of creeds, and in our day is strong in the
memories of the past and in the hope of a still greater
future. Like most other historical landmarks, it was an
end as well as a beginning. The struggle of French and
English in Scotland may justly be regarded as a continua-
tion of the Hundred Years' War, from which, indeed, it
is separated only by the hiatus in English foreign policy
caused by the Wars of the Roses ; and thus the Treaty
of Edinburgh, concluded little more than two years after
the fall of Calais, may be said to have finally decided
on a basis of compromise the mediaeval rivalry of
France and England. The English had been driven
out of France, but, on the other hand, the French by
English hands had been expelled from Scotland ; and,
not only so, but they had been forced to recognise
1 Keith, i. 287-308; Foreign Calendar, 1560-61, Nos. 261, 262, 311.
Both Ty tier and Burton say that the concession as to the anus of England
was easily obtained, which hardly agrees with Cecil's statement : " This
article was stifly denied until by threatening it was gotten." — Ibid. No.
261. Professor Hume Brown (Life of Knox, ii. 82) represents the French
as saving their dignity by treating with the rebels at the intercession of
England. So, indeed, one might suppose from the text of the treaty as
ingeniously worded by Cecil ; but in reality the clause in question, far
from being a victory for France, was a most distir^t humiliation, the com-
missioners having received positive instructions ' not to mingle matters
of Scotland with England in the treaty, nor dishonour their king by
noting that he is forced by the Queen to observe anything to his subjects."
TREATY OF EDINBURGH 79
_
England as the heir to the place they had forfeited
in the affections of the Scottish people. Cecil justly
regarded his work at Edinburgh as the fulfilment of his
noble aim " to have this isle well united in concord."
In a letter to Elizabeth he declared " that the treaty
would be no small augmentation to her honour in this
beginning of her reign, that it would finally procure
that conquest of Scotland, which none of her progenitors
with all their battles ever obtained ; namely, the whole
hearts and goodwills of the nobility and people, which
surely was better for England than the revenue of the
crown."1 In these words we have the stronger nation
gracefully acknowledging to the weaker its baffled
ambition after two centuries and a half of not un-
generous warfare ; and though in the light of history
Cecil's exultation may seem somewhat premature, it
must surely be admitted that British nationality was
recognised, in germ at least, if not in form, when that
unfortunate alliance was cut asunder which had so long
distracted the energies of our nation, and withheld it
from the path of its imperial destiny.
The concessions granted to the Scots in their separate
treaty or " Accord " with the French were of the fullest
and most liberal character. The withdrawal of all French
troops, except 120 to be divided between Dunbar and
Inchkeith ; the dismantling of Leith and Dunbar, and a
guarantee that no new fortifications should be raised
without consent of the Estates ; a council of ten to be
nominated equally by the Queen and the Estates from
twenty-four persons chosen by the Estates ; no foreigner
to be admitted to political or judicial office ; and a
general amnesty from March 6, 1559, to be framed by
the Estates, with power to make what exceptions they
1 Tytler, vi. 170.
80 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
pleased — these concessions might surely satisfy the most
determined opponent of French influence in Scotland.
In addition to these, however, there was another con-
cession, the meaning and extent of which were keenly
discussed at the time, and are still a point of some
difficulty to the historian. It was agreed that the Estates
should assemble on the 10th of July, 1560, and that
they should adjourn from that day to the 1st of August,
provided that no business should be transacted before
all hostilities had come to an end ; and in one of Cecil's
despatches it is expressly stated that the object of the
adjournment was to give time for the country to be
cleared of men of war.1 In the interval the French
commissioners were to order a despatch to Francis and
Mary to inform them of this concession and to solicit
their concurrence ; and then follows the statement, " and
this assembly shall be as valid in all respects as if it had
been called by the express commandment of the King
and Queen." The despatch accordingly was sent ; 2
but as no reply had been received by the 1st of August,
the Parliament spent eight days in discussing the legality
of its own existence. One party urged that in the
absence of a royal commission no Parliament could
lawfully meet, another that the meeting of Parliament
in such a case was the very circumstance provided for
in the Accord ; and this opinion being the verdict of the
majority, the House proceeded to business.3 On the
1 Foreign Calendar, 1560-1561, No. 315.
a The Cardinal of Lorraine told Throckmorton that Francis had received
letters from his commissioners " of the 7th July," and these were probably
the despatch in question. — Foreign Calendar, 1560-1561, No. 411.
3 Spottiswoode, i. 325. There is no mention of this discussion in Knox,
in Calderwood, or in Randolph's letters. But Spottiswoode had reason to
know, his father being a leading Reformer, and it is certain that no
formal business was transacted before the 9th.
WAS THE PARLIAMENT LEGAL ? 81
whole, the majority was probably right ; for, if the
Parliament could legally constitute itself on the 10th of
July without " the express commandment " of the
sovereign, there seems to be no good reason why it
could not, under the same conditions, set to work on the
1st of August. Moreover, the time allowed for com-
munication with the French Court was so exceedingly
short — if it was not wholly inadequate — that the message
was probably rather a matter of courtesy than of serious
import ; l and we have seen that the holding of the
Parliament was made conditional, not on the tenour
of the reply, but on the cessation of hostilities. If,
however, the Parliament was not in itself illegal, it
evidently might become so by violating the provisions
of the Accord ; and this indeed we shall find to have
been the case.2
In one respect the Parliament of 1560 was a signal
innovation on the established usage ; for the inferior
gentry, impelled doubtless by their interest in the new
religion, successfully asserted their right to be present.
The constitutional status in Scotland of the lesser barons
1 Throckmorton expressly tells us that the distance from Edinburgh to
Melun, a place about 25 miles from Paris, was " fifteen or sixteen good
journeys." — Foreign Calendar, 1560-1561, No. 412.
2 Professor Hume Brown refers to Teulet, Papiers d'Etat, i. 606, as
evidence that Francis II. regarded the Treaty of Edinburgh as perfectly
valid, and "if the Treaty of Edinburgh was valid, its terms necessarily
imply the legality of the Parliament of August." — Life of Knox, ii. 87,
note. This is a misreading of the letter of Francis to the Bishop of
Limoges. Francis says he means to abide by the treaty, not because it
is valid, but " pour le repos universel de la chrestiente et beiu et tran-
quillite de rnoii royaulme." Indeed, the whole tenour of the letter
implies that Francis might have repudiated the treaty, if he had chosen
so to do ; and assuredly Francis would never have admitted that the
legality of the Parliament was implied in the terms of the treaty, for he
proposed to send over commissioners to hold the Parliament legitimately.
— Francis II. to the Estates of Scotland, November 16 ; Foreign Calendar,
1560-1561, No. 712.
F
82 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
—but here they were called simply barons — seems to
have been precisely the same as it was in England,
where their right to attend Parliament in person had
been affirmed by the Great Charter, and proving
burdensome, had been exchanged for that of electing
representatives. In Scotland, however, the Act of 1427,
which required two commissioners to be sent from each
shire, was wholly inoperative till it was re-enacted in
1587, so that the lairds, being no more zealous in such
matters than the English squirearchy, had almost
ceased to be an integral part of Parliament. On no
occasion had more than thirty been present, and during
the 77 years which preceded the Reformation hardly
any of them had appeared at all, and none without a
special writ.1 But in this Parliament the names of
no less than 110 barons are recorded, "with many
other barons, freeholders, and landed men without all
armour,"2 and the great majority of these can have
received no writ of summons. The French commis-
sioners had laid down that " it shall be lawful for all
those to be present who are in use to be present without
being frightened or constrained " ; and though the
clause was plainly intended to be precautionary rather
than restrictive, the resort of so unwonted a multitude
might easily be construed as an attempt at that intimi-
dation which the clause had been framed to prevent.
During the week which preceded the formal opening
of the Parliament Knox preached daily in St. Giles's
from Haggai on the building of the Temple, and the
first effect of his discourses was to reveal the possibility
of a schism in the Protestant party. Some of his
1 Keith, i. 316,317.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1560-1561, No. 428. Instructions given by the
Estates to Sir James Sandilands, their envoy to the French Court.
THE CONFESSION 83
hearers were far from being favourably impressed, and
Maitland sarcastically remarked : " We mon now forget
ourselves and bear the barrow to build the houses of
God." Others, however, took the matter so much to
heart that they met in conference and agreed upon a
petition to the Estates, which was evidently inspired, if
not written, by Knox himself. In this document they
prayed for the total abolition of the Roman doctrine
and ritual. That this might not seem too sweeping a
reform, they undertook to prove that " in all the rabble
of the clergy there is not one lawful minister," but that
all of them are " thieves and murderers, rebels and
traitors, living in whoredom and adultery, and doing all
abominations without fear of punishment" ; l and anyone
who might be disposed to expect better things of them
in future was assured of his mistake. The petition also
glanced at the monstrous abuses caused by the purchase
of benefices at Rome ; and Knox tells us that, when it
was read in Parliament, many of the nobles "abhorred a
perfect Reformation," because they had unjustly
possessed themselves of the patrimony of the Kirk.
Dissension on this point, however, was happily averted;
for the petitioners were merely directed to draw up a
statement of the doctrines which they wished the Parlia-
ment to confirm, and in the space of four days they
returned with the document known to ecclesiastical
historians as the Scottish Confession. The Confession
was read on the 17th of August; and unlike the petition
which gave rise to it, and another and more pretentious
document presented a few months later, it was received
with enthusiastic approval, the nobles, with some five
exceptions, declaring that in this faith they would live
and die, and many offering to shed their blood in its
1 Knox, Works, ii. 89-92.
84 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
defence. A week later, three Acts were passed abolish-
ing the authority of the Pope within the realm and
prohibiting the celebration of Mass under very heavy
penalties — confiscation of goods, banishment, and, for
the third offence, death. Thus, when the Parliament
was dissolved, or at all events rose, on the 27th, the
ancient ecclesiastical system had been swept away, and
nothing more substantial than a form of doctrine had
been established in its place.
Whatever may have been the justice or the ex-
pediency of these proceedings, they were certainly at
variance with the provisions of the Accord, which,
though it had not expressly limited the jurisdiction of
the Parliament, had done so implicitly beyond all
reasonable doubt. The last article provided that, as the
French commissioners had no power to determine any-
thing with regard to religion, "some persons of quality"
should be chosen in the ensuing Parliament to make
"remonstrances" on this subject to the King and
Queen, and to know their pleasure therein. Religious
legislation seems thus to have been debarred ; for
obviously there could be no use in petitioning the
sovereign for a reform of religion, when the Parliament
had already settled the matter in its own way. There
was, however, another and a more stringent article to
which the French Government invariably appealed in
proof of its assertion that the Scots had violated the
treaty. This article required that reparation should be
made to any bishops, abbots, or other ecclesiastics who
might complain of injury to their persons or goods, and
that in the meantime they should be free to enjoy their
revenues without violence or molestation. Accordingly,
three of the bishops sent in a petition for redress ; but
not choosing apparently to face so hostile an assembly,
THE TREATY VIOLATED 85
they failed to appear in its support, whereupon the
Parliament declared itself absolved from blame, and
issued a decree for "the stay of their livings." Inter-
preted in any broad sense, the article could mean only
that the hierarchy was to be secured against further
attack ; nor is it easy to see by what means greater-
injury could have been done to the whole body of the
clergy than by abolishing the Mass and thus interdict-
ing them from the discharge of their functions. If in
these proceedings the Protestants infringed the letter of
the treaty, there was another in which they violated its
spirit, and that, too, in a very essential point. They
must have been well aware that the French commis-
sioners had received positive instructions not to re-
cognise the Anglo- Scottish alliance, and that Cecil had
contrived to compromise the matter only when the
negotiations had practically been broken off. In spite
of this, the Parliament, at the instance of the English
Government, passed an Act in confirmation of the
Treaty of Berwick. The Act is said to have passed
unanimously ; but we know from Randolph that great
efforts had been necessary to win over many of the
nobles ; l and Maitland, though he strongly supported
the measure, admitted to Cecil that it would highly
irritate the French.2
It must appear somewhat extraordinary that the
Protestants, whose weakness had been so conspicuous
in the late war, should thus have challenged France to
a renewal of the struggle ; but their conduct is ex-
1 Foreign Calendar, 1560-61, No. 418.
2 Ibid. No. 461. Cecil sent down a draft of the Act, " before the receipt
whereof, upon a five days, the treaty was by the Estates confirmed, in
form nothing disagreeing from the advice contained in Cecil's letter."
—Ibid. No. 469. Maitland to Cecil, August 29.
86 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
plained to some extent by the hope, which Elizabeth
had done much indirectly to encourage, of a marriage
between herself and the Earl of Arran. It was this
which had prevailed upon the waverers to concur with
the majority of the Parliament in confirming the Treaty
of Berwick. From the first the Protestants had looked
to this marriage as the seal and reward of their amity
with England ; in the general repugnance to France the
project was widely popular ; and Maitland declared that
"the very Papists can be content for the accomplishment
thereof to renounce their god the Pope." L Chatelherault
was so intoxicated with the grandeur in store for his
family that he could talk of nothing else ; and the
signature of his brother the Archbishop is the first of
those appended to the document in which the Estates
announced their purpose to Francis II. Precisely how
much was intended by the promoters of the scheme it
might be difficult to say. In their letter to Francis
the Estates urged that Arran was one of his own sub-
jects, that he had been educated in France, and that
France through this marriage would be assured of the
friendship of England.2 There can be little doubt, how-
ever, that, if the scheme had succeeded, the Scots would
have thrown off their allegiance to Mary Stewart and
raised Elizabeth and Arran to the throne of the two
kingdoms. Statesmanship must have approved such
a consummation ; the extreme Protestant party would
have been content with nothing less ; and through the
overthrow of the Roman Church the French connexion
had become more anomalous than ever.3
1 Foreign Calendar, 1560-61, No. 523. 2 Ibid. No. 479.
3 There was a rumour — nothing more — that, in the event of the
marriage taking place, the Guises "will cause the French Queen to
renounce her title for ever to Scotland " in return for a renunciation, on
RATIFICATION REFUSED AT PARIS 87
The prospect of union with England renders the
violent proceedings of the Parliament more intelligible,
in so far as they reflect on the policy of its leaders ; but
even had no such prospect existed, these proceedings
must still have been the same. The Church was so
far gone in decay, the nation so utterly indifferent to its
fate, the preachers so vehement against it, and the
nobles so deeply interested in its overthrow, that no
attempt to substitute reform for revolution could have
had any chance of success ; and when the treaty had
to be violated in spirit through the renewal of the
league with England, the observance of its stipulations
in favour of the hierarchy was not of much importance.
The French, however, made a dexterous use against
Elizabeth of the conduct of her Scottish allies. When
her ambassador in France pressed for the ratification of
the treaty, he was told that, as the Queen had chosen
to identify herself with the Scots, it was but reasonable
that the Scots should fulfil their obligations before the
French king ratified the treaty with England. If
Elizabeth wished the treaty to be confirmed, she must
either find means to recall the Scots to their duty or
renounce her league with the latter by suffering them
to be left out of the treaty.1
Apart from this difficulty with France, there was a
party among the Scottish Reformers whose inflexible
spirit was not likely to meet with Elizabeth's approval.
England had reconciled herself to Scotland on terms
which are in the highest degree creditable to the
Elizabeth's part, of her title to Calais. — Foreign Calendar, 1560-61,
No. 27. Mr. Henderson, in his article on Arran in the Dictionary
of National Biography, makes the serious mistake of attributing these
words to the Scots instead of to the French.
1 Foreign Calendar, 1560-1561, No. 534.
88 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
wisdom and generosity of English statesmen ; and
Elizabeth had reason to expect that the Reformation
she had saved from ruin would be carried out with
some regard to her wishes. Knox and his colleagues,
however, were not likely to be influenced by such
considerations as these. Randolph wrote that he had
talked with them all on the question of an uniformity
of religion throughout the two realms, but had little
hope of any good result — he found them " so severe
in that they profess, so loath to remit anything of
that they have received." l If Randolph's advice
had been accepted, the Confession would not have
been brought forward so soon ; and Maitland and
Wynram, when the work was presented to them
for revision, thought it advisable to re- write the
chapter dealing with the obedience due to the civil
magistrate.
When the confirmation of the Treaty of Berwick was
proposed to the committee of the Parliament known as
the Lords of the Articles, the members resolved that
Elizabeth's goodness towards the realm far exceeded
their power to recompense, and " therefore " suit should
be made to her to embrace the opportunity now offered
for binding the two kingdoms in perpetual friendship.
Maitland apologised to Cecil for the conduct of his
countrymen in thus requiting one boon by asking
another. He knew that Cecil was as anxious for the
Arran marriage as he was himself; but he also knew
that Cecil did not wish the matter to be hurried forward
against the certainty of failure. However, since he
could not prevail upon his colleagues to act more
warily, Maitland consented to be one of the three
ambassadors who left Edinburgh for London on the
1Knox, Works, vi. 119.
ELIZABETH REJECTS ARRAN 89
llth of October.1 Elizabeth had no intention of
marrying Arran ; but the Protestant party in England
was so strongly in favour of the match that she took
refuge in delay ; and it was not till the 8th of
December that the ambassadors were apprised of her
decision in terms of courteous refusal. When she gave
this answer, Elizabeth was probably not aware of the
death of Francis II., which had taken place near mid-
night on the 6th ; and though he was known to be
seriously ill, Throckmorton had written on the 1st that
his physicians declared him to be out of danger. But
the news, when it came, must have confirmed her in her
repugnance to the Scottish marriage. The importance
to England of the friendship of the Scots was now
greatly diminished, whilst the latter were likely to act
more independently through the severance of their
connexion with France.
These two events — Elizabeth's rejection of Arran and
the death of Francis II. — marking, as they do, the
highest point reached by the united forces of the Pro-
testant movement, afford a convenient halting place
in the study of the Reformation. Much progress had
still to be made, for the Reformed Church, as distinct
from the reformed religion, had to wait seven years for
its recognition by the State. But these were years of
strife and bitterness, potent for evil, the damnosa
hereditas of three generations. The failure of the
1On the 7fch December the ambassadors presented a memorial to the
Privy Council, in which these lines occur : " United strength, by joining
the two kingdoms, having also Ireland knit thereto, is worthy considera-
tion. By this means Ireland might be reformed and brought to per-
fection by obedience, and the Queen would be the strongest Princess in
Christendom upon the seas, and establish a certain monarchy by itself in
the ocean, divided from the rest of the world." — Foreign Calendar,
1560-61, No. 784.
90 THE WAR OF REFORMATION, 1559-1560
Arran scheme, which was almost certainly intended to
initiate a political revolution, and the return to Scotland
of its Catholic Queen, formed a coincidence well cal-
culated to cause a schism in the Protestant party, since
the politicians could no longer hope to keep in line with
the religious extremists. We shall find that such a
cleavage, foreshadowed to some extent by the effect of
Knox's sermons on the building of the Temple, did in
fact take place ; and the history of the last phase of
the Reformation groups itself naturally round two
outstanding figures — John Knox, on the one side,
and Maitland of Lethington, on the other.
CHAPTER III.
JOHN KNOX.
IF the Parliament of August, 1560, had been content
with abolishing a Church to make room for a creed, it
was not the fault of the Protestant pastors, who had
taken care to provide themselves beforehand with an
elaborate scheme of ecclesiastical polity. The Book of
Discipline was compiled towards the end of May, while
the siege of Leith was in progress and the hierarchy
still intact ; and if Knox's hearers were aware of its
contents, they could be at no loss to interpret his
sermons on the building of the Temple. In addition
to its penal laws of conduct, the Book of Discipline
comprised a plain stipulation that the Church lands
should be surrendered for the support of the ministry
and the schools ; and the latter part of the Book was
probably more odious to the nobility than the former,
being obviously far harder to evade. In the turmoil of
revolution the nobles had tightened their grasp on the
wealth of the Church ; for many of the prelates had
been induced to alienate part of their estates in the
hope of securing whatever was left. Hence the Book of
Discipline was kept in the background ; neither the
sermons of Knox nor the petition, to which they gave
32 JOHN KNOX
rise, sufficed to bring it before Parliament ; and it was
not till January of the following year that its adoption
by the first General Assembly was endorsed by any lay
authority, and then only by a majority of the Privy
Council. That so many as thirty lords and barons
should have put their names to the Book is somewhat
surprising. Maitland declared that many had signed it
implicitly — " in fide parentum, as the bairns are bap-
tised " ; and it is certain that more than one of the
subscribers stirred the indignation of Knox in after
years as " merciless devourers of the patrimony of the
Kirk."
The ministers had some reason to resent the selfish-
ness of their lay associates ; but, if their demands had
been a little more moderate, they might perhaps have
been more successful. As the property of the Ancient
Church has been reckoned at one half of the national
wealth, it would certainly have been a liberal endow-
ment for a handful of Protestant pastors ; and the
nobles enjoyed privileges under the old ecclesiastical
system which they could not hope to retain under the
new. The Lords of the Congregation once assured
Cecil that "they sought heaven rather than earth";1
and if Knox had not been of this opinion, he could
hardly have supposed that they would really make such
concessions as would place them, after all their efforts,
in a worse position than they had occupied before the
struggle began. The Church lands were destined to be
an object of much bitter contention ; but the dispute
was eclipsed for a time by the new interests that were
crowding up on the political horizon.
When the news of Elizabeth's rejection of Arran
reached Edinburgh with the return of the ambassadors
1 Foreign Calendar, 1558-1559, No 1028.
POLITICAL PARTIES 9S
on the 3rd of January, 1561, the Scots had for some time
been aware of the death of Francis II. ; and Maitland
frankly admitted to Cecil that the conjunction of these
two events, the one following so close on the other,
" makes many to enter on new discourses." l The aspect
of affairs was indeed profoundly altered. The failure of
the Arran scheme was a blow to the Reformation on the
political side, just as the death of Francis, though the
preachers were exulting over it as inimical to the house
of Guise, was a blow on the religious side. The hope of
uniting the two kingdoms under one Protestant monarchy
was now at an end, and the Scottish Reformers had to
reckon with the return of their Catholic Queen. Towards
the end of February we find Maitland writing to Cecil
in a more hopeful strain. The country was divided
into three factions. Those who had been neutral in the
late war (as Mary had foreseen from the first) were
entirely at her devotion ; the Hamiltons stood out for
an assurance that she would marry the Earl of Arran ;
whilst a third party were disposed to welcome her on
the sole condition that she came with no foreign force ;. ;
for they were confident that " ways enough " would be
found to disarm her hostility to the Reformation.2
What these ways were Cecil could be at no loss to
conjecture. As soon as the French king's death was
known in London, Maitland had approached him with a
proposal that Mary should be recognised as Elizabeth's
successor ; 3 and since then, he had written twice to the
same effect. In making this suggestion Maitland had
his own ends to serve, for no one was more deeply
pledged than he to the amity of the two realms ; but
that in so doing he rightly interpreted the wishes of his
1 Foreign Calendar, 1560-1561, No. 875. "Ibid. No. 1033.
3Tytler, vi. 244.
94 JOHN KNOX
countrymen there can be no question. We have seen
how all parties in Scotland, Protestant and Catholic
alike, had set their hearts on Arran as a husband for
Elizabeth. Now that that scheme had been frustrated
and the union with France dissolved, it was almost
inevitable that the Scots should revive in one form or
another those pretensions of their Queen, with a view to
enforcing which they had consented, two years before,
to bestow the crown matrimonial on the Dauphin.
Though the interests of Protestantism had formerly been
opposed to such a policy, they could now apparently be
secured by no other means. If the Queen was to come
back, and to come back a Catholic, the two religions
could be reconciled only through a common political
aim. With the English succession before her eyes,
Mary would be in no mood to quarrel with her Pro-
testant subjects ; and they would look to her, Catholic
as she was, for the fulfilment of their national aspirations.
Thus, as the months wore on, the drift of political
opinion in Scotland became more and more apparent.
Queen Mary had persistently refused to ratify the
Treaty of Edinburgh ; and when she told Throckmorton
that her decision must be deferred till she was in a
position to consult her own subjects, she probably
knew very well that the Scots did not wish her to
ratify it. Elizabeth was so much of this opinion that
she wrote in no measured terms to the Scottish Estates,
warning them that, if it was through their counsel that
the ratification was withheld, she would be as careless to
keep the peace as they should give her cause.1 The
treaty, indeed, had become somewhat of an anachron-
ism ; for it had been concluded at a time when the
Scots were quite prepared to depose Mary, and when
1 Keith, ii. 38.
RETURN OF QUEEN MARY 95
her exclusion from the English throne was essential to
the fruition of their hopes for the Earl of Arran. Now
that the Stewarts, and not the Hamiltons, were to be
the instrument of union, Cecil's diplomacy would have
been more welcome had it been less successful. As the
treaty stipulated that Mary, " in all times coming,"
should abstain from using the English arms, she could
not ratify it without renouncing her place in the
succession, and could not refuse to ratify it without
seeming to persevere in her former pretensions to
Elizabeth's crown. There could be little doubt which
of these alternatives was the more welcome to the Scots
in their present humour ; and when Lord James, the
leader of the " precise Protestants," wrote to Elizabeth
on the 6th of August, suggesting that " midway" which
Maitland had already suggested,1 the union of all the
Reformers on this basis was apparently complete. The
" precise Protestants " would doubtless have been loath
to offend so strong a guardian of the faith as Queen
Elizabeth ; but, on the other hand, they had a stronger
motive than their associates for disarming Mary's
hostility to the new religion.
Queen Mary arrived at Leith early on the morning of
Tuesday, the 19th of August, 1561. She had not been
expected till the end of the month ; but as soon as the
guns of the little squadron had made themselves heard
behind the thick veil of fog, the citizens flocked down to
the beach to bid her welcome, the Protestants being as
7 O
eager as any. As the news spread, the nobles hurried
in from the country; bonfires blazed at night, and a
great company of psalmists made merry under the
windows of Holyrood House. A few days, however,
sufficed to disclose a root of bitterness of which the
1 Tytler, vi. 245.
96 JOHN KNOX
politicians had taken too little account. On the first
Sunday after the Queen's arrival the zealots of Fife
raised an outcry against the royal chaplains when they
prepared to celebrate Mass ; and on the Sunday follow-
ing John Knox " thundered out of the pulpit" in such a
manner that Randolph " feared nothing so much as that
one day he would mar all." l " That one Mass," he said,
" was more fearful to him than if ten thousand armed
enemies were landed in any part of the realm of purpose
to suppress the whole religion." 2 Knox's mode of
reasoning was exceedingly simple. The Bible had con-
demned idolatry as worthy of death ; the Mass was
idolatry ; and therefore to set it up again, even in the
privacy of the Royal Chapel, was to draw down on the
land the vengeance of an offended Deity. To oppose
this, however, the politicians had a syllogism of their
own, equally compact, and to modern minds much more
convincing. Scotland must have a sovereign ; the only
sovereign it could have was Mary, and Mary happened
to be a Catholic. Knox probably failed to see the signi-
ficance of Elizabeth's rejection of Arran; but whether he
saw it or not is of no great moment, for in all his
actions he was governed by a law of conduct which
was no more applicable to Scotland in August, 1561,
than to Scotland at any other period, either before or
since.
If Knox had denounced the policy of compromise as
essentially unworkable, and if it could be shown that he
had some alternative to propose which promised better,
the fact that the policy failed would, no doubt, be an
1 Foreign Calendar, 1561-1562, No. 455. — Randolph to Throckmorton,
August 26th. The date of this letter shows that Knox had been vehe-
ment enough even before the second Sunday.
2 Works, ii. 276.
THE APOSTLE OF HEBRAISM 97
argument in his favour,1 though even in that case it
might be necessary to protest that the failure of
moderate counsels is no proof in itself that they ought
never to have been adopted. To look at the question in
this light, however, would be to misapprehend alto-
gether the issues at stake. Knox undoubtedly suspected
Mary from the first as of " a crafty wit" ; but the sum
of all his denunciation of the Queen's Mass was that
such a thing would so inevitably provoke God's anger
that its toleration must in all circumstances be politi-
cally inexpedient. As he himself said, it was a contest
between "flesh and blood" and "the truth of God" ;
that is to say, between secular statesmanship and the
simplicity of religious zeal.
Apparently, then, it must make a great difference in
our estimate of Knox whether we regard him from the
personal or from the historical standpoint. Of Knox as
the apostle of Hebraism, the glory of a class of men so
happily described by Matthew Arnold as those who
walk fearlessly2 and resolutely by the best light they
have, without ever pausing to enquire whether after all
that light be not darkness, something might be said
herej were it not that so much has been said already;
for whatever honour accrues to that type of character
in its highest manifestation may justly be ascribed to
him, and in most liberal measure. Unless, however,
we are content to be mere hero-worshippers, mistaking
in our homage to strength the means for the end, it
1 " Even in the point of worldly wisdom events were to prove that
Knox had seen deeper into the possibilities of things than the politicians
themselves." — Hume Brown's Knox, ii. 159.
2 Knox's personal courage has often been impeached. He was too
conscious of his own powers to be at all ambitious of the crown of martyr-
dom ; but a coward, in any sense of the word, he assuredly was not.
G
98 JOHN KNOX
must always be a question whether the Hebraist, who
admittedly is not a man of many parts, found the true
field for his activity ; and perhaps, if we put this
question with regard to Knox, the answer may not
be quite so favourable to him as might at first sight
appear.
We may take for granted, probably, that Nature in-
tended Knox to be the leader of a revolution; at all
events, she had admirably equipped him for the task, and
had sent him into Scotland at a time when something
considerable in that shape was urgently required. Never-
theless Destiny in this case would seem to have been at
cross purposes with Nature. It has already been
remarked more than once that the decline of the old
faith had overshot the growth of the new ; that a
moribund church had been kept standing by favourable
political tendencies ; that the people had learned to
despise the Mass long before the Reformers had taught
them to abhor it as a form of idolatry ; that the
monasteries were destroyed mainly by disaffected
Catholics; that, in short, Protestantism in Scotland
was a formative rather than a disintegrating force. If
this is true of Knox's creed, it is also true of Knox
himself as a factor in the evolution of that creed. He,
too, was a builder rather than a destroyer. Though he
was born in 1505, he was forty-one years of age before
he came forward as a religious teacher ; and by that
time the first phase of the Reformation — what one may
call the anti-national phase — was practically at an end.
Lindsay had published most of his principal works, and
the psalms of Wedderburn were already in the hands
of the people. Knox's ministry in 1546 was confined to
the castle of St. Andrews ; and from that year, with the
exception of less than a twelvemonth from autumn,
HIS SHARE IN THE REFORMATION 99
1555, to July, 1556, he was absent from Scotland till
May, 1559, when the struggle with the Queen Regent
had just begun. Knox, indeed, may fairly be said to
have launched the Reformation on the tide of civil war.
The outbreak took place in his absence ; but it was
owing to his personal exhortations that the Protestants
in 1555 had seceded from the Church ; and his letter
from Dieppe in October, 1557, was followed by their
defiance of the established religion in the following
December. But the movement, which had received its
first impetus from him, soon passed altogether out of his
guidance. He was not in sympathy with the patriotic
spirit, which, with the force of a great tradition behind
it, was the really decisive element in the revolution.
What a revolution of the Knoxian stamp would have
been like we may easily imagine. It would have been a
popular movement ; the masses, fired by the oratory of
the pulpit, would have flocked to the standard ; and
religion, voiced ever in deeper and stronger tones, would
have been the battle-cry throughout. Such was the
movement of the Covenant in the following century;
for by that time Scotland had ceased to be an inde-
pendent kingdom, and Calvinism had struck its roots
through the mass of the people, both peasants and
townsmen; but such the Reformation assuredly was not.
The people did not rally to the voice of Knox ; there
was no enthusiasm for the cause, and a large party, even
in the Lothians, remained obstinately neutral ; religion
gave place to patriotism as the dominant force till
eventually it dropped almost out of sight ; the barons
and burghers of the Congregation were dependent
from the first on external support ; and when at length
the English intervened to overthrow the French
ascendency in Scotland, they complained of their allies
100 JOHN KNOX
as so weak that the work devolved entirely on their
own shoulders.
In a movement of this sort, dependent for its success
on a combination of discordant forces, Knox was
evidently out of place. When the war began in the
autumn of 1559, Maitland supplanted him as secretary
of the Congregation ; he was so obnoxious to Elizabeth,
the mainstay of the cause, that Cecil thought it
necessary to suppress his letters ; and he himself tells
us that, as his colleagues judged him "too extreme," he
had withdrawn altogether from the counsels of the
party. The success of the movement implied, of course,
the overthrow of Catholicism ; but when the battle was
won, the motley host, with which Knox had been
carried to victory, fell rapidly to pieces. The nobles
were content with having secured the Church lands, the
rabble with having pulled down the monasteries, the
patriots of all classes with having expelled the French.
These last, indeed, promised to hold together longer
than the rest ; for, with the union of the crowns in
sight, they had no motive to arrest the triumph of the
Reformation. But, when Francis died and Elizabeth
rejected Arran, the patriots preferred their country to
their religion ; and thus the company of zealous lairds
and burghers, which had formed Knox's personal follow-
ing, was left, shorn of allies, to protest against the
Queen's Mass, and in virtue of that protest to become
the nucleus of the Reformed Church.
Knox, then, was called to build on ground, which had
been cleared for him mainly by the hands of others ;
and what qualifications he had for the task, besides
dauntless zeal and unimpeachable honesty of purpose, it
may be well briefly to enquire. Certainly Knox was no
visionary enthusiast ; the bent of his mind was so far
HIS APOLOGY TO ELIZABETH 101
eminently practical that it never swerved from the
object immediately before him ; and his earnestness,
which otherwise would have run wholly into fanaticism,
was strangely tempered by a sense of humour. Unfortu-
nately, however, for the success of his efforts, his
absolute loyalty to what he considered the revealed will
of God rendered him as inflexible to the plastic power of
circumstance as the most rigorous theorist ; and though
a compact force of this nature may be of great use as an
engine of revolution, its value in the making of institu-
tions is surely open to question. For what we call
secular statesmanship Knox always professed the most
vehement scorn ; " politic heads " filled with worldly
prudence were his especial aversion ; and he ascribed the
triumph of the Reformation in 1560 to the fact that he
and his friends had laid aside their own wisdom as
" mere foolishness before the Lord," and had " followed
only what they found approved by himself." l Whether
he really believed that his fellow-workers had adopted
his own iron law of conduct may perhaps be doubted ;
but that he himself acted on it at all times, to the
extent of repudiating anything in the nature of tact,
conciliation, or compromise, there is evidence enough to
show. Thus in his famous apology to Elizabeth for The
First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous
Regiment of Women — a work which Calvin suppressed
at Geneva even during the reign of Mary Tudor — we
find him writing in this style : Elizabeth is to ground
her title on the eternal providence of God, who, contrary
to nature and without her deserts, has exalted her head ;
she is to forget her birth and all title depending thereon,
and to remember how, for fear of her life, she declined
from Christ in the day of his battle.2 This letter was
1 Works, ii. 264. 2 Works, ii. 28-31.
102 JOHN KNOX
written on the 14th of July, 1559 ; and three weeks
later, he told Cecil that, if the English continued to be
neutral, the Protestant cause in Scotland must inevitably
eollapse.1 As the apology was forwarded to Cecil for
presentation to the Queen, it probably did less harm
than the author had any right to expect. Elizabeth's
detestation of Knox is quite intelligible. It was mainly
that of the crowned head for the republican ; but it was
also that of the stateswoman for one whom she believed
to be an irresponsible fanatic.
The triumph of the Reformation in Scotland was so
much the work of English statesmen and of English
soldiers that religious conformity with England would
certainly have been its logical result. We have seen
that Randolph had discussed this subject with Knox to
little purpose during the Parliament of August, 1560;
and Knox's intractability was soon to be more publicly
avowed. It was hoped by those, who encouraged her in
her designs on the English succession, that Mary would
be led by this means to embrace the Protestant religion ;
and both Maitland and Lord James believed that
nothing would conduce so much to this end as a meeting
between their sovereign and Queen Elizabeth. Knox,
in his abhorrence of the Queen's Mass, might have been
expected to approve of this scheme ; but as Elizabeth
might prevail upon Mary to join the Church of England,
and as that Church retained " some dregs of Papistry,"
he vehemently attacked the Anglican service in one of
his sermons, and in Randolph's words " gave the cross
and candle such a wipe that as wise and learned as him-
self wished him to have held his peace. He recom-
pensed the same with a marvellous vehement and pierc-
ing prayer in the end of his sermon for the continuance
1 Foreign Calendar, 1558-1559, No. 1134.
ATTACKS THE ANGLICAN SERVICE 103
of amity and hearty love with England." l This incident
is eminently characteristic of Knox, who had no idea of
that mutual concession between opposing aims, which
goes to form what we call a policy. He wished Mary to
become a Protestant, and he wished Scotland to be in
friendship with England ; but, if Mary was thinking of
going over to Protestantism on the Anglican side, then
he must warn her and her subjects against the " dregs
of Papistry," even though in so doing he should imperil
the amity of the two realms, and even though Mary as
an Anglican Protestant would have been preferable in
his eyes to Mary as a Catholic. To denounce the "dregs
of Papistry " could not be wrong ; and it was for Provi-
dence to reconcile such denunciation with the conversion
of the Queen and the welfare of the kingdoms. The
sermon had much more serious consequences than the
apology. If the English and Scottish Churches were
afterwards at deadly feud, it cannot be said that Knox
did anything to avert the conflict.
The man who could thus wantonly attack the sister
Church at a time when it promised to be of service in
the great business of his life, was not likely to concede
anything to his opponents at home. If Knox did not
get all he wanted in matters of religion, it was of no
avail to give him less. When the Scots received Mary
to her kingdom, they had stipulated only for mutual
toleration : it was an advance on this principle, when
the Privy Council provided that two-thirds of the
ecclesiastical revenues — or of what was left of them—
should be secured to the clergy of the old Church for
life, and that one-third should be divided between the
Crown and the Protestant pastors. The provision thus
made for the ministry may have been very inadequate —
1 Foreign Calendar, 1561-1562, No. 883.
104 JOHN KNOX
though many lords, it was said, had not so much to
spend — but more than this the Church did not receive
even after the deposition of Mary in 1567 ; and coming
from a Catholic Queen, the concession was most valuable
in itself as a recognition of the right of the new religion
to be supported by the State. The Romanists, seeing
the matter in this light, declared that there now wanted
nothing but the meeting of the two Queens to over-
throw the Mass and all.1 But Knox was implacable.
" I see two parts freely given to the Devil," he said
from the pulpit, "and the third must be divided betwixt
God and the Devil " — that is, betwixt the ministers and
the Queen — " an unsavoury saying," he admits, " in
the ears of many. " 2 Equally uncompromising was his
attitude towards the Protestant nobles of his own party.
If he could not force them to comply with the Book of
Discipline as regards the patrimony of the Church, he
would at least subject them to its penal laws of conduct.
Thus, in 1563, we find the Lord Treasurer of Scotland
doing penance for an amour before the whole congrega-
tion, Knox " making" the sermon;8 and in 1567 the
Countess of Argyll had to appear in sackcloth during
service in the Chapel Royal at Stirling for having
assisted at the Catholic baptism of the Prince.4 Knox's
feud with the nobles was destined to last longer and to
end less successfully than his struggle with Mary
Stewart ; and one can hardly wonder at their reluctance
1 Foreign Calendar, 1561-1562, No. 746, note.
2 Works, ii. 310. 3 Ibid. vi. 527.
4 Even Froude admits the impolicy of this proceeding : " The public dis-
grace of high-born sinners could hardly have assisted in producing the
peace for which so much else was sacrificed ; and something of the storm
about to break over Scotland may be traced to an absence of worldly wis-
dom in the new-born Church." — History, viii. 303.
HIS GREATNESS 105
to endow a church which was already strong enough to
humiliate them so bitterly in the eyes of the people.
These blunders — if such they were — may well sur-
prise us in one who has been credited with so much
practical sagacity. Practical Knox was, for he always
knew his own mind and never parted company with
facts, in so far at least as they came within his range of
vision ; but of his sagacity one would like to see better
proof. He was certainly mistaken in the character of
his associates amongst the nobles ; he so entirely mis-
understood the struggle with France that he was
capable of describing it as a triumph of zeal over
worldly wisdom ; and if he was right in his reading of
Mary Stewart, he read her by the blaze of passion, not
by the light of intellect. Had Mary been the most
harmless of simple-minded Catholics, the mere fact that
she maintained " that idol the Mass " would have been
enough to make her dangerous in Knox's eyes.
The Scottish character is admittedly a strong one,
and of that character in its hardest, strongest, and
coarsest fibre no better example can be found than
Knox. Only a nation, which had been hammered for
centuries on the anvil of unequal and almost continuous
warfare, could have produced such a man ; and only in
such a nation could he have found followers as strong
and unbending as himself. His greatness is beyond
dispute. A mere preacher, without birth or wealth, of
no great learning, and with ideas in no way superior to
those of his class, by sheer force of will he made himself
a power in Scottish politics so potent and so enduring,
that no statesman could afford to disregard it either in
his own day or in the days that were to come. It was,
of course, as an orator that he most strongly impressed
the mind of his age. Contemporaries speak of him as
106 JOHN KNOX
"thundering cannon-shot" out of the pulpit, as able in
an hour to put more life into them than six hundred
trumpets, as so vehement even in his old age that he
was like to break the pulpit in pieces and to fly out of
it ; and the effect of such eloquence may have seemed
greater to them than it really was. At all events,
Randolph speaks of Knox as ruling the roost and all
men standing in fear of him at a time when, so far as
we know, his denunciation of the Queen's Mass produced
no appreciable result ; and Throckmorton probably
never made a greater mistake than when he supposed
the Reformation to be due entirely to Knox's preaching.
And well were it, if in this slight analysis we did not
require to proceed further. But it is the penalty of
those, who cultivate only one side of their nature, that
their vices are at least as numerous as their virtues ;
and if Knox was vehement, narrow, uncompromising, he
was likely to have other qualities of a much more
questionable kind.
We are accustomed to think of Knox as a lover of
truth ; and in the sense of fidelity to the best that was
in him, or to what he believed to be such, no man ever
served it more faithfully ; but of that other and rarer
form of truth, which consists of sobriety of judgment,
clearness of vision, " seeing things as they really are,"
he was not so much devoid as utterly incapable. His
writings are merely Knox with all his intensity reflected
in type — true to nature indeed, but only to that small
segment of it, which happened to be embodied in Knox
himself. It required no small audacity in the use of
words to speak of the " monstriferous empire of Women "
as " amongst all enormities that this day do abound upon
the face of the whole earth the most detestable and
damnable " ; of the Mass as " the most abominable
HOW FAR A LOVER OF TRUTH 107
Idolatry that ever was used since the beginning of the
world " ; of Queen Mary as being surrounded by
" murderers and such men as are known unworthy of
the common society," at the very time when she had
banished the Protestants who had murdered David
Riccio ; and of the rich dresses worn by the Queen and
her ladies at the opening of Parliament as calculated to
" provoke God's vengeance, not only against these foolish
women, but against the whole realm." * Carlyle says of
Knox's History of the Reformation that it inspires
" everywhere a feeling of the most perfect credibility and
veracity " ; but Carlyle's feelings in a matter of this sort
were not likely to be those of the unbiassed critic.
The truth is, that Knox's book is much more valuable as
literature than as history. It is not only that he is
guilty, doubtless in good faith, of misstatements and
errors in chronology, which are surprising in an author
who writes history, to some extent, of his own making,
but that he is credulous, and something more than
credulous, to the full measure of his personal antipathies.
The sinister sayings, which he puts in the mouth of Mary
of Lorraine, were obviously based on mere rumour ; one
or two, such as her song of exultation on beholding the
dead bodies of her enemies at Leith from the battle-
ments of Edinburgh Castle, may be put aside as
physically impossible ; and others as impossible in the
sense that they do violence to our knowledge of human
nature. Of this class let one example suffice. We have
seen that, of the eight commissioners who represented
Scotland at the marriage of Mary Stewart with the
Dauphin, four — the Earls of Cassillis and Rothes, Lord
Fleming, and Bishop Reid of Orkney — died in France
on their way home. According to Knox, when the
1 Works, iv. 368 ; ii. 265, 381, 421.
108 JOHN KNOX
Queen Regent heard the news, she exclaimed, "What
shall I say of such men ? They lived as beasts, and as
beasts they die ; God is not with them, neither with
that which they enterprise." l It would be difficult
surely to find a statement in any history more out-
rageously improbable than this. The men, of whom the
Regent is said to have spoken thus, were her personal
friends ; several of them had been active in procuring
her the Regency ; and all of them had died in the
discharge of a mission, which to her and her family was
of the highest possible service. The sister of Lord
Fleming was one of the four Maries, who had accom-
panied the Queen to France ; Cassillis is described by
Buchanan as " excellent ... in all virtues pertaining
to a nobleman";2 and Bishop Reid was so very far
from having lived as a beast that his rectitude was the
theme of his contemporaries, and the monuments of his
enlightened liberality may be seen in Kirkwall and in
Edinburgh at the present day.
What Knox was in private life does not concern us
here. If he was naturally tender, diffident, genial,
humane, it can only be said that his absolute loyalty
to his mission was the death of his better self; and it
is as the man with a mission that he has entered into
the making of Scottish history. Randolph in 1562
writes thus of his attitude towards Queen Mary : " He
is so full of mistrust in all her doings, words, and
sayings, as though he were either of God's privy council
that knew how he had determined of her from the
beginning, or that he knew the secrets of her heart so
well that neither she did or could have for ever one
good thought of God or of his true religion." 3 In-
1 Works, i. 265. 2 Chameleon, p. 12.
3 Foreign Calendar, 1662, No. 1266.
HIS FANATICISM 109
stances of the same bitter uncharitableness might be
cited, almost to any extent, from the History of the
Reformation. For Mary of Lorraine, dying unbe-
friended in the castle of Edinburgh, reconciling herself
to her enemies and praying them not to leave her
whilst she lived, he has not a word of pity. Of Bishop
Reid, we are told that he died with his coffers of gold
on either side of him ; l and the story, even if it be true,
is particularly ungenerous, for Knox must have known
that, if the Bishop amassed money, it was for no ignoble
purpose.
And fortunate must have been the convert to this
relentless creed, if in losing some of the milk of human
kindness, he did not acquire other qualities of a very
different character. It is primarily to Knox's teaching
that we must ascribe that ascendency of the Old Testa-
ment over the New which has left so large and so dark
a stain on the history of the Scottish Church. The
Book of Discipline mentions incidentally as worthy of
death, not merely murder, but blasphemy, adultery,
perjury, " and other crimes capital " ; 2 and it was one
of Knox's grievances that he could not prevail upon
the State to proceed against adulterers with the full
rigour of the Jewish law.3 Whether he would really
have had Mary Stewart put to death as an idolatress
may certainly be doubted ; but when she had fallen
1 Works, i. 264. *Ibid. ii. 227.
3 The Parliament of 1563 enacted that "notoure and manifest com-
mitters of adultery in any time to come" should be put to death,
provided they had been duly admonished to abstain from the crime;
" for other adultery " the acts already made were to suffice. — Thomson's
Acts, ii. 539. Knox's comment on this is " the acts against adultery . . .
were so modified, that no law and such law might stand in eodem
predicamento ; to speak plainly, no law and such acts were both alike." —
Works, ii. 383.
110 JOHN KNOX
from her high estate, he denounced her so furiously from
the pulpit as guilty of adultery and murder that the
more moderate of the nobles almost despaired of being
able to save her life. Facts soon came to light which
showed that Mary was not the only guilty person, that
the murder of Darnley had not been the merely personal
crime it was at first supposed ; but Knox was inflexible.
Writing to Cecil, " with his one foot in the grave," he
exhorted him to " strike at the root " ; l in his public
prayers he deprecated God's vengeance, " for that Scot-
land hath spared and England hath maintained the
life of that most wicked woman " ; 2 and after Moray's
assassination, he declared that the only blot on his
memory was " the foolish pity," which had stood be-
tween his sister and the penalty of her crimes.3 Mary
may have been all that her enemies said she was ; but
she probably never did so much harm to Scotland as in
being the cause of such a spirit in Knox. The ruthless
severity of his teaching was rendered doubly degrading
by those threatenings of plague and famine which on
this and similar occasions were continually proclaimed
in its support. That we ought to shed blood, even
blood justly forfeited, because, if we do not shed it, a
worse thing will befall ourselves, may be either super-
stition or policy ; but it is not religion. The reader
may be disposed to regard such a doctrine as merely the
expression in theological language of the necessity of
capital punishment. But murders had been committed
in Knox's own day in Scotland which he would have
been loath, indeed, to visit with any such penalty. He
certainly approved of the assassination both of Cardinal
Beaton and of David Biccio ; and if he was not a party
to the plot against the latter, it was a singular coin-
1 Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 594. 2 Works, vi. 570. 3 Ibid. 369.
TOO INTOLERANT EVEN FOR HIS OWN AGE 111
cidence that Riccio should have perished during a
public fast, when Knox was declaiming from the pulpit
on such subjects as the slaying of Oreb and Zeb and the
hanging of Haman.1 The inference is exceedingly ob-
vious. If it was lawful to assassinate Riccio, because he
was an enemy to the faith, and on the same principle to
take up arms, as Knox's friends did with his entire
approval, against the Queen's marriage with Darnley,
it could depend only on the capacity of the new king
to be formidable, whether his assassination should be
regarded as a heinous sin or as a righteous judgment;
and even if we could remove the Darnley murder alto-
gether out of the category of political crimes, it would
not extenuate Knox's merciless severity towards one,
whose view of the lawfulness of assassination approxi-
mated in practice so closely to his own.
Knox's denunciations of the Queen were delivered at
a time when they were not likely to pass without
protest. Mary had been deposed and her infant son
crowned king as James VI. in 1567 ; but a party was
soon formed in her favour, and the quarrel developed
ultimately into civil war. In 1571 anonymous letters
appeared — some thrown into the Assembly, some nailed
on the church doors — accusing Knox of bringing religion
into contempt through his railing against the Queen,
and of splitting the Church into factions by inter-
mingling civil and profane matters with the Word of
God in his 'sermons.2 The spectacle of the pulpit con-
verted into a drumhead, of the prophets paraded every
Sunday as recruits for King James against his mother,
seems indeed to have considerably scandalised some of
Knox's own friends. When his secretary, Richard
Bannatyne, asked the Assembly to pass an Act
, vii. 28. 2Calderwood, iii. 44.
112 JOHN KNOX
approving of his speeches against the Queen, the
members answered discreetly that " they would bear
their part of the same burden with him," but the Act
was refused l ; Craig, one of his colleagues at Edinburgh,
was so obstinately neutral that the congregation dis-
pensed with his services ; and when Knox returned to
the city, after more than a year's residence at St.
Andrews, in 1572, he thought it necessary to stipulate
that he should not be required " to temper his tongue."2
St. Andrews, indeed, had not answered to his expecta-
tions as a place of retreat. Bannatyne mentions as a
thing very reprehensible in the minister of that town
that he " used sic generality, as, alas ! the most part of
the ministers do," that his sermons were equally appli-
cable to all parties.3 Knox, of course, preached on a
different plan, and his discourses on Daniel proved so
distasteful to the heads of the University that they
conceived for him " a deadly hatred and envy." These
men were evidently well acquainted with the Reformer's
character. An incident having occurred in the Univer-
sity which caused much ill-feeling between St. Salvator's
and St. Leonard's, the provost of the former college
wrote to Knox, requesting him not to allude to the
matter from the pulpit until both parties had been
heard. Nevertheless, on the following Sunday, Knox
vindicated his right to intervene, protesting, somewhat
irrelevantly, that the colleges were no more exempt
from his censure than any other place.4 Of the bitter-
ness generated by this and other such disputes we have
evidence in the protestation of a certain Archibald
1 Calderwood, iii. 46. 2 Ibid. 223.
3 Memorials of Transactions in Scotland (1569-1573), by Richard Banna -
tyne, Secretary to John Knox (Bannatyne Club), p. 256.
* Ibid. p. 258
APPEALS TO THE FUTURE 113
Hamilton " that neither he nor any other faithful in
the university be thrallit to any minister who exempts
himself from order and godly discipline ; * and in
Knox's farewell message to the Assembly — " Above
all things preserve the Kirk from the bondage of the
universities." 2
Thus in weariness and contention the life of the great
Reformer drew towards its close ; 3 and if he complained
of the age as ungrateful, it was not without reason that
he looked for his vindication to the ages that were to
come.4 In view of the great mass of uneducated opinion,
which was still outside the pale of the Church, the
power of fanaticism was not likely to perish from
inanition ; and through the parochialising of Scottish
politics, which was one result of the Union of the
Crowns, a generation was to arise which was more in
harmony than his own with Knox's spirit.
And now to sum up. John Knox, then, was a man
of overpowering force of character, hard, narrow, un-
reasonable, honest to the verge of insanity, who at the
head of a great popular movement might have shaken
the gates of Rome, but who in the course of events was
called, not to lead, but to organise, not to destroy, but
to build. The influence of so perverted a destiny could
not be wholly good. It was not merely that all the
violence and hatred and uncharitableness, which might
have been useful enough as the fuel of revolution, were
infused bodily into the new Church, but that the Church
itself was founded on principles which forbade all hope
1 Ibid. p. 263. 3Calderwood, iii. 222
3 He died November 24, 1572.
4 " What I have been to my country, albeit this unthankful age will
not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the
truth." — Oalderwood, iii. 54.
H
114 JOHN KNOX
of its stability. The Reformation, which triumphed in
August, 1560, was a comprehensive and a many-sided
movement, no less political than religious ; but the
Reformed Church, which took shape in August, 1561,
was an institution so exceedingly limited in scope that
it could accommodate — at all events with comfort —
only a very small minority. To say that Knox founded
the Reformed Church is no doubt true, but only in the
sense that the Reformed Church, as he founded it,
had its origin in dissent ; for the men, who protested
with Knox against the Queen's Mass, had probably less
in common with the rest of their countrymen than if
they had differed from them on points of speculative
theology. Had Knox diverged from the beaten track
of Calvinism and persuaded others to do the same, he
could not, as the founder of a sect, have more truly
fostered sectarianism than by endowing a minority of
the Reformers with his own absolute spirit. Knox, in
fact, was the first dissenter ; and we shall find his
spiritual progeny dissenting, abjuring, and protesting at
every stage of the Church's history. This, of course,
was as far as possible from the end which he himself had
had in view. Indeed, the strongest proof of Knox's
failure as an ecclesiastical statesman is the signal con-
trast between the permanence of his spirit and the
barrenness of his ideas. Aiming at the establishment
of a theocracy, he endowed his Church with so hard and
absolute, so intense and uncompromising a character
that its claims were rejected by the State in his own
day, and that in the hands of his immediate successors
it was reduced to struggle for independence within
its own borders. The conflict of Church and State,
which was entirely opposed to Knox's ideas, was the
outcome of his spirit ; for the failure to dominate
THE FATHER OF SCOTTISH DISSENT 115
the State resulted naturally in a jealousy of State
interference. Whatever it might be in form — and it
was not till the eighteenth century that dissent could
be openly avowed — the Knoxian Church was essentially
the Church of a minority ; and thus we are confronted
with the singular paradox that the man, whose ideal
was a theocracy, a Civitas Dei, has become a parent of
schism, the father of Scottish dissent.
CHAPTER IV.
MAITLAND AND MAEY STEWART, 1561-1567.
MAITLAND was unquestionably the most brilliant figure
in the politics of his time and country — a scholar, a wit,
a courtier, a diplomatist, and a statesman. He traced
his descent from an Anglo-Norman family which had
crossed the Border in the days of William the Lion and
had fought for the land of its adoption against Edward I.
His father, who long survived him and died at the
age of ninety in 1586, was Sir Richard Maitland of
Lethington, in East Lothian, whose zeal in collecting
early Scottish poetry is commemorated in the name of
the Maitland Club. At the time of the Queen's return
Maitland was a young man of about three-and-thirty,
who had already achieved a great political reputation.
As Secretary of State to Mary of Lorraine, he had seen
service both in France and in England, and had repre-
sented Scotland in the negotiations at Cateau-Cambre'sis.
In the autumn of 1559, as we have seen, he went over
to the Lords of the Congregation, and from that period
to his death in 1573 his life may be studied in the
history of the time. At the Parliament of August,
1560, he presided as " harangue-maker" or speaker, nor
could the honour have been more happily bestowed; for
MAITLAND'S GENIUS 117
the Scottish Reformation, in so far as it was a political
movement dependent on the support of England — and
such in the main we have found it to be — was the work
of Maitland more than of any other man.
Whether they loved or feared him, contemporaries
are unanimous in their testimony to Maitland's power.
Buchanan refers to him as " a young man of prodigious
ability." Randolph shrank from meeting him in con-
ference at Berwick — " To meet with such a match your
Majesty knowe.th what wit had been fit." 1 Elizabeth
described him as " the flower of the wits of Scotland " ;
and when she thought him overmatched by Sussex in a
literary encounter, she declared herself more pleased
with the latter " than if he had won an action in the
field."2 Throughout the civil war, which resulted, in
the long run, from the deposition of Mary Stewart,
Maitland eclipsed all his associates in the cause of the
captive Queen. Knox denounced him as " the chief
author of all the trouble raised both in England and
Scotland " ;8 Morton called him "the whole forthsetter
of the other side " ; * and Randolph wrote to Cecil that
he might easily see who had enchanted the " whole
wits" in Scotland.5 Bannatyne, who goes out of his
way occasionally to " confound his politic head," speaks
of him as " soul to Athol," " soul to Home," " soul to all
the godless band " ; and he even ventures to be a little
profane when he describes Chatelherault as pouring
forth " his complaint or else his prayers " before " the
great god, the Secretare. " 6
1 Froude, vii. 225. 2 Ibid. ix. 322. 3 Calderwood, iii. 234.
4 Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 849. 5 Ibid. No. 877.
6 Memorials, p. 38. Froude says of Maitlaud that he was probably
" the cleverest man, as far as intellect went, in all Britain," and that he
" would at any age of the world have been in the first rank of states-
118 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
In his History Knox first mentions Maitland—1' a
young man of good learning and of sharp wit and
reasoning" — as one of those whom he persuaded to
secede from the Church in 1556. These two men must
needs have been as far apart as the political and the
religious sides of the Reformation ; but in reality the
gulf between them was very much wider. Maitland's
was the most conspicuous and incomparably the best
furnished of those " politic heads," which Knox so
vehemently abhorred ; and no community of purpose
could long have united natures so essentially opposed.
Religion, as a system of belief, can hardly be reckoned
as an element in so personal an antagonism. No
doubt Maitland betrays his affinity to the great minds
of the Elizabethan age by his essentially modern spirit,
and he was too good a scholar not to participate in their
pagan modes of feeling ; but if he had not cared some-
thing for Protestantism, he would hardly have declared
for it so early as 1556, and he had as thorough a
knowledge of the Scriptures as any preacher of his
time.1
It pleased Knox in after years to denounce him from
the pulpit as an atheist and an enemy to all religion,
who had said that heaven and hell were mere inventions
men." — History of England, ix. 165, 317. Elsewhere bespeaks of "his in-
tellectual cultivation, unusual in any age and unexampled in his own."—
Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Character. Froude, however,
is not very consistent in his references to Maitland. Thus, in vol. ix. of
the History, p. 317, he describes him as "a passionate Scot, proud of his
own intellect, and prouder of his country, to which he devoted himself
with a tenacity of purpose that no temptation of private interest could
affect": and in vol. x. p. 210 we are told that Maitland " among his
splendid qualities wanted faith in all great principles." Is patriotism not
a great principle ?
1 " II etait homme k discuter les questions de politique avec Cecil,
et les textes bibliques avec Knox." — Philippson's Marie Stuart, i. 246.
HIS RELATIONS WITH KNOX 119
to frighten children ; l and when Maitland defended
himself on the ground that he had been instructed from
his youth in the fear of God, Knox returned the charac-
teristic answer, that " it was not education that made a
true Christian man, but the illumination of the soul by
God's spirit."2 Of such illumination, in the technical
sense, Maitland probably had little enough ; but he
might have been content to acknowledge the superiority
of Knox in his proper sphere, if Knox had abstained
from interfering with him in his own. Whether or not
he believed in the all-sufficiency of reason, he certainly
believed it to be indispensable in political affairs. He
regarded politics as a fine art, the natural vocation of an
aristocracy, which required for its proper exercise, not
merely the widest practical experience, but all the
varied culture of Greece and Rome ; and the notion
that a few plebeian preachers should presume to domi-
nate the State, in virtue of some inner light peculiar
to themselves, was too preposterous in his eyes to be
taken seriously.
Thus at the building of the new theocracy Maitland
played the part of Sanballat the Horonite to Knox's
Nehemiah. He scoffed at the Book of Discipline as " a
devout imagination," and he was greatly entertained
with the idea of the Duke having subscribed it. If
Knox was to have his way with the Church lands, " the
Queen," he said, " would not get at the year's end to buy
her a pair of new shoes." When some had been moved
to tears by the proclamation of coming judgments, "We
must recant and burn our bill," said Maitland, " for the
Preachers are angry " ; and on one occasion he so com-
pletely forgot to be sarcastic, that " in open audience he
gave himself unto the Devil, if that ever after that day
1 Calderwood, iii. 231. 2 Ibid. p. 233.
120 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
he should regard what became of Ministers ... let
them bark and blaw as loud as they list." l
It was Maitland's misfortune, however, to be involved
in at least one full-dress debate on the subject of the
Queen's Mass, with the account of which Knox's History
closes, in so far as it was written with his own hand ;
and the case for the defence is probably more intelligible
to us than it was to Knox. If the people lived
virtuously, Maitland could not believe that they would
be plagued for the idolatry of their ruler ; and if God
was so ready to send plagues, He could doubtless
suppress the sovereign's idolatry without the people
requiring to move in the matter. To the precedents
cited by Knox from the history of the Jews, Maitland
replied, as a modern would have done : " The facts were
extraordinary and ought not to be imitated " ; " they
were singular motions of the spirit of God and appertain
nothing to this our age." If the Jews had destroyed
idolatrous kings and rooted out their whole posterity,
they had done so at God's special command ; and in
other cases he doubted whether they had done well.
True, as Knox said, they had prospered ; but prosperity
was not always evidence of the divine approval.2
Probably in the opinion of the audience Knox had the
better of the argument ; for in his own province he was
invincible, and Maitland could only protest feebly against
a method of reasoning, which the spirit of the age,
reflected doubtless to some extent in himself, did not
permit him to disallow. Indeed, one cannot read the
narrative of this and other such encounters without
perceiving that Maitland had a humorous sense of his
own helplessness, and was alive to the futility of the
1 Knox, Works, ii. 128, 297, 310, 418, 421.
-Ibid. ii. 425-461.
AN IDEALIST 121
whole discussion. " Prove that," he would say to Knox,
"and win the play." Elsewhere we read that Maitland
" smiled and spoke secretly to the Queen in her ear " ;
or that Maitland leant on the Master of Maxwell, and
said, "I am almost weary." Against such an opponent
as Knox sarcasm was much more effective than argument ;
and these pitched battles required more ponderous
artillery than any that Maitland loved to use. And
yet, as Sanballat the Horonite, he was playing a part,
which, however it might suit his abilities, was far from
corresponding with his real nature. The cynicism he
affected was merely the natural gaiety, which had lost
its sweetness at the breath of unreason ; and it is not
difficult to understand the exasperation, with which he
regarded opponents, who would make no concessions,
and would accept of none, which fell short of absolute
surrender. Naturally he was a gay and a genial man,
welcome both at the English Court and in the festivity
of these early days at Holyrood — " banqueting upon
banqueting," as Knox called it — a man, who could
recommend love-making, even to Cecil, as a sovereign
remedy for all ills, and who was never so much troubled
with affairs of state that he had not at least one merry
hour out of the four-and-twenty.1
It need hardly be said, however, that the Maitland,
who fills so large a space in the history of the Reforma-
tion, was neither a cynic nor an elegant trifler, but a
man thoroughly in earnest. Much as Maitland and
Knox differed in almost all respects, there was one in
which they entirely agreed. Both were idealists ; and
they were the only two men of their time, with ability
mough to make them a power, each of whom had set
*See his charming letter to Cecil, February 28, 1564. Tytler, vi.
ippendix xxi.
122 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
one object before him, which he followed with unwaver-
ing resolution to the end. In the case of Knox singleness
of aim resulted naturally in inflexibility of practice ;
for Knox's ideal was the outcome of his own narrow
intensity, and could be attained only by methods as
uncompromising as itself. Maitland was a spirit touched
to larger, if not to finer issues. Of unclouded intelli-
gence, resourceful, sanguine, confident in his own abilities,
he pressed towards the goal by paths so many and so
devious that Buchanan was able to satirise him as a
type of inconsistency and faithlessness — as changeful in
his political principles as the chameleon in its colour.
He was quick to know the best road ; but he was too
apt to believe that no road could be too bad or too
circuitous for him. That such a man should have been
so grossly and so generally misunderstood must be
ascribed mainly to the complexity of his ideal and to
the extreme fidelity, with which he followed it hither
and thither through the maze of competing interests,
utilising each of them so long as it would serve his
purpose. He did not care greatly for Protestantism,
except in so far as it might facilitate the union of the
two kingdoms \ and he would support no scheme of union
which did not secure the honour and the greatness of
his native land. Thus he moved in a sphere of his own,
apart alike from the mere unionist, from the patriot in
the narrower sense, and from the rigid Protestant.
Like all ideals in politics, which are not stamped as
hopelessly impracticable, Maitland's conception of union
was far from being the creation of a single brain. We
have seen how the earlier Protestant movement had
failed utterly through its association with the aggressive
policy of Henry VIII. ; and how at the crisis of the
Reformation England had intervened to save Scottish
HIS PATRIOTISM 123
nationality, when it was endangered by the designs of
France, That Scotland's natural destiny should be
fulfilled through the same spirit, which had sufficed in
the past to preserve its independence, was an idea so
entirely true to the best traditions of the country, that
it could not fail to fascinate such a mind as Maitland's.
For Maitland was as Scottish to the core as birth and
lineage and sentiment could make him. His ancestor,
Sir Richard Matalant, had held the castle of Thirlstane
against Edward L, and his grandfather had fallen at
Flodden. To him, as to his Elizabethan kindred, the
country of his birth was neither a pinfold of the uni-
versal Church nor a mere province of the republic of
letters, but a land most emphatically his own, with a
long train of heroic memories behind it, and before it
the dawn of a broader day. If he looked forward to
the time when Great Britain should be the strongest
power upon the seas, and should form " a certain mon-
archy by itself in the ocean, divided from the rest of
the world," l he also looked back with pride to the days
when Scotsmen, in their determination to live free and
independent, had builded better than they knew. But
to hold the balance equally between the two sides of so
delicately poised an ideal was a task too great for Mait-
land's contemporaries, and eventually even for himself.
His was a nobler weakness than that which the poet has
called the " last infirmity of noble mind " ; and if death
took him early in the bitterness of failure, it may have
been that he loved Scotland, not wisely, but too well.
As Maitland had been the first to suggest the means
of reconciling Mary both with England and with her
own Protestant subjects, the working out of the new
policy devolved mainly on him. Soon after the Queen's
xSee p. 89, note.
124 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
return he was appointed her Secretary of State, and he
and Lord James divided between them the government
of the realm. From 1561 to 1564 inclusive Maitland
spent a considerable part of each year in London ; and
both by letters to Cecil and in personal interviews he
urged upon Elizabeth the importance of recognising
Mary as her successor. Able and persistent as it was,
his diplomacy was less decisive in its results than in its
influence on his own career. When Maitland was forced
to turn from Arran to Mary Stewart as the instrument
of his policy of union, he embarked on a course, which
was destined in the long run to bring him into conflict
with England. The question of the Arran marriage
had been one of political expediency ; that of the
Stewart succession was a question of rights — of rights
which the Scots had formerly been content to waive, but
which they were now resolved to push to the uttermost.
How entirely the aspect of affairs had changed may be
seen from the letter of instructions, with which the
nobility furnished Maitland, when he started for London
in September, 1561. The nobles were glad to find that
their Queen bore Elizabeth no ill-will for the refusal of
a safe conduct to Scotland, and much relieved that the
blame of so unusual a proceeding was not imputed to
them. Elizabeth would no doubt reciprocate such
kindly feelings ; but if, as was not to be supposed,
she should use any discourtesy towards their sovereign,
they would know how to conduct themselves in so just
a quarrel.1 A month later, we find Maitland writing to
Cecil that he found in his mistress " a good disposition
to quietness, but therewith joined a careful regard to her
own estate and a courage such as will be loath to forego
her right."2
1 Keith, ii. 73-74. 2 Foreign Calendar, 1561-1562, No. 588, note.
THE SUCCESSION DISPUTE 125
Negotiations for union, begun in this spirit, might
conceivably end in a very different result — especially as
the assertion of rights was parried by a complaint of
wrongs. As Mary found the Scots no more favourable
than herself to the Treaty of Edinburgh, she still refused
to ratify it ; and thus, with the full approval of her
subjects, she was in the invidious position of claiming
the nearest place in the English succession without hav-
ing formally withdrawn her pretensions to Elizabeth's
crown. Maitland made light of this difficulty. The
treaty might be revised so that the clause as to the
arms of England should apply only to Elizabeth's life-
time ; and meanwhile, if Elizabeth resented the with-
holding of the ratification, Mary too had something to
complain of. Henry VIII. , in default of the issue of his
own children, had left the crown to the descendants of
his sister, Mary of Suffolk, to the prejudice of his elder
sister, Margaret of Scotland ; and until the injury to the
Stewarts had been redressed by Act of Parliament, it was
hardly fair to speak of injury to the House of Tudor.1
Mary's claim, however, involved interests wider even
than the fate of a dynasty. The English Protestants
were indignant with the Scots for conspiring with their
Catholic Queen to repudiate a treaty, which had been
purchased by English blood and treasure, and was the
seal of their deliverance from a foreign yoke. On the
other hand, even if Maitland had been less of a Scots-
man, he could hardly have yielded in so vital a point.
Elizabeth had told him plainly that she could not
recognise Mary as her successor for fear of assassination ;
and if she could not face this danger in order to obtain
the ratification of the treaty, she was not likely to face
it when the treaty had been signed.
*Froude, vi. 526.
126 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
The Treaty of Edinburgh had been the work of Cecil ;
and how little disposed Cecil was either to cancel or to
recast the result of his labours may be inferred from the
tone of Maitland's letters. There had been many means
of " a godly conjunction " ; and if this, which had most
hope of success, was to go the way of all the rest, they
must accept it as God's will that the two nations were
ever to be a plague to each other. He had consecrated
himself to the uniting of the isle in friendship ; for five
or six years he had shot at no " scope " but this ; and
ever as one occasion failed, he began " to shuffle the
cards anew, always keeping the same ground." l The
two Governments w^ere still far from any point of
approximation, when Elizabeth created a welcome diver-
sion by proposing a personal interview with the Queen
of Scots. Mary caught eagerly at the suggestion ; and
with the exception of the Catholics, who trembled for
the Queen's Mass, and of Knox, who feared to lose
the Mass in the Anglican service, her subjects were
as anxious for the meeting as she was herself. There
was some hope that she might yield to Elizabeth in the
matter of religion ; and as she was not to be pressed
to ratify the treaty, it looked as if Elizabeth had
decided to recognise her claim. But the meeting,
which was fixed for July, 1562, at Nottingham, was
fated never to take place. In May the war of religion
broke out in France, and Elizabeth was prevailed upon
by her Council not to dash the hopes of the Huguenots
by showing favour at such a time to a daughter of
the House of Guise. Thus the meeting was postponed
to the autumn ; and as the autumn, far from bringing
peace to France, found Elizabeth in arms with Conde
against the Guises, it was postponed again. Meanwhile
1 Foreign Calendar, 1561-1562, Nos. 632, 910.
MAITLAND'S POLICY NOT FRUITLESS 127
the news reached Scotland that, when Elizabeth in
October was at the point of death, only one member of
her Council had raised his voice in favour of the
Stewart succession. The knowledge that so little had
been gained by more than a year's diplomacy was
almost a deathblow to Mary's hopes ; and though Mait-
land was despatched again to London in the following
February, he succeeded only in preventing anything
being done to her prejudice by the English Parliament.
We must not suppose, however, that Maitland's
labours had been fruitless because they had failed
in their ostensible object. If his negotiations had
achieved nothing abroad, they had at least sufficed at
a most critical time to maintain the Protestant ascen-
dency in Scotland. It is true that Mary had never
laid aside her hostility to the Reformation, that she
had assured the Pope of her determination to restore
his authority, and that she was corresponding secretly
with the enemies of Protestantism on the Continent.
On this ground it has been argued that Knox's vehe-
mence was after all the best policy, and Maitland's
attempt at conciliation very much the reverse. The
argument is certainly a strange one. Mary might be
faithless — and her Secretary, whatever he might protest
in public, had his own suspicions ; but another sovereign
than Mary Scotland could not have ; and if she was
aiming at the restoration of Catholicism, it was the
more credit to him, who by flattering her personal
ambition for his own large and statesmanlike ends had
induced her to postpone her design. At the end of
1564 Mary had been three and a half years in Scotland ;
and during that period she had not only not assailed
the reformed religion, but had granted a provision for
the ministry, had overthrown Huntly, the leader of
128 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
the Catholic nobles, had suffered the Archbishop of
St. Andrews to be at least nominally imprisoned, and
had confirmed the law against the celebration of Mass.
Anxiety to protect the rights of the Scottish crown
in England was not the only motive of Maitland's
mission to London in the spring of 1563. Queen Mary
was now thinking seriously of marriage ; and the
person she desired above all others as a husband was
Don Carlos, the son and heir of Philip II. of Spain.
Maitland conferred on this subject with De Quadra,
the Spanish ambassador at the English Court ; and on
the same errand he went over to France to entreat
the good offices of the Cardinal of Lorraine. Neither
the Cardinal nor Catherine de Medici, however, had any
desire to further a scheme which might have united
both England and Scotland with the great Spanish
Empire in one omnipotent monarchy ; l and it was
owing to the persistent hostility of France, favoured
by what came to be known of Don Carlos' personal
character, that Mary lost the prize of her ambition. At
the close of 1563 all hope of the Spanish marriage was
practically at an end ; but by that time it had given
place to other and less pretentious schemes. It was to
Maitland during his embassy of this spring that Elizabeth
first suggested the Earl of Leicester, or, as he then was,
Lord Robert Dudley, as a husband for Queen Mary ; and
a year later, the Earl of Lennox obtained a permission to
return to Scotland, of which he availed himself in the
following September. Lennox had been an exile ever
since he had made war on his native country in the
service of Henry VIII. As he had suffered for Eng-
land, he was restored through the good offices of the
English Government ; but the father of Lord Darnley,
1 Philippson, Historie du Rtgne de Marie Stuart, ii. 180.
THE LEICESTER PROPOSAL 129
who stood next to Mary in the line of succession and
was the favourite of the English Catholics, was no
ordinary refugee ; and Elizabeth, realising too late the
consequences that might ensue from his return, sought
vainly at the last moment to detain him in England.
It is obvious that Maitland' s schemes of union might
be accomplished, either through the Tudor Government
or through the large body of disaffected Catholics. As
a Protestant, the ascendency of whose party in Scotland
had been secured by English aid, he had naturally
inclined to the former alternative ; but, under the influ-
ence of blighted hopes and wounded patriotism, he was
rapidly drifting round to the latter. How keenly the
Scots resented their failure to establish the Stewart suc-
cession may be seen from the fact that even so strong a
Protestant as Moray — Lord James had been created
Earl of Moray in 1562 — approved of the Spanish mar-
riage, than which there could be no more serious menace
to Elizabeth's throne. Maitland, indeed, told De Quadra
that his mistress might gain little by her recognition,
unless she married some prince, who was powerful
enough to enforce her rights.1 When, therefore, Eliza-
beth, in March, 1564, formally proposed Leicester for
the hand of the Queen of Scots, her offer was received
in no very complaisant mood. If Maitland and Moray
had been resolute before in support of the Stewart
succession, they were inexorable now, when a marriage
was proposed for their Queen, which, without the estab-
lishment of her claim by Act of Parliament, would be
utterly inconsistent with her dignity. Maitland harped
so continually on this theme that Elizabeth told Sir
James Melville " that he did always ring her knell in
her ears, talking of nothing but her succession."2
1 Froude, vii. 51. 2 Foreign Calendar, 1564-1565, No. 865.
I
130 MAITLAND AND MAEY STEWART, 1561-1567
The Leicester scheme brought to a crisis the dispute
which had long been pending between the two Govern-
ments. A letter of Maitland's to Cecil shows that he
entered on the negotiation with little hope of success.
As he had found Cecil more careful not to hurt himself
than to say anything which might advance the common
cause, he had not during the last twelve months dealt
so rashly in these affairs as he was wont to do. He was
ready, however, when he saw opportunity, to return to
his accustomed method. If a conjunction was really
meant, and if Cecil would endeavour to draw it on,
there would be no lack of conformity on the side of
Scotland ; but " if time was always to be driven without
further effect than had followed upon any message
passed between them these three years, he should in
the end think himself most happy, who had least
meddled in the matter."1 In November a conference
was held at Berwick between Maitland and Moray on
the one side, and Randolph and Bedford on the other,
which, however, did so little good that the Scottish
statesmen, on their return to Edinburgh, wrote a
joint letter to Cecil, in the course of which they pro-
tested that, if the negotiation failed for lack of friendly
dealing on his part, he should not think it strange if
they turned about and sought to save their credit with
the Queen as best they could.2 It was probably
this passage, endorsed in the margin as "a threat-
ening," which induced Cecil to " go roundly to
work " with his two correspondents. If Mary would
accept Leicester, he professed his belief that Elizabeth
would make inquisition of her sister's right, and " as far
1 Maitland to Cecil, June 6, 1564.— Foreign Calendar, 1564-1565, No.
462.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1564-1565, No. 845.
THE LEICESTER PROPOSAL 131
as shall stand with justice and her own surety, would
abase such titles " as might conflict therewith. This he
called plain speaking ; only they must remember that
such promises were made subject to the approval of the
English Parliament.1
Cecil had a difficult part to play ; but he could be in
no doubt as to the effect of these vague assurances on
Maitland and Moray, when they replied that, if this
was all he could promise with regard to the succession,
they would not only not persuade their mistress to the
Leicester match, but would speak not a word more con-
cerning it. He had reproached them with bargaining
for a kingdom in terms of union. Might they not
retaliate that he, in refusing to bind himself to such
terms, was trying merely to set an Englishman on the
throne of Scotland ? 2
Though the cause seemed hopeless, Maitland con-
tinued to labour for its success. The matter had not so
many difficulties, that Cecil might not remove them all
if he chose. Mary must have some equivalent for
making so mean a marriage at Elizabeth's dictation ;
but if her title were once secure, he should deem Leices-
ter a better match for her than even the King of Spain
or the King of France ; and happy should they be to
co-operate in a work of union which would be more
glorious to them in all time coming than if they had
fought for conquest or for independence in the days of
old.3 These appeals, however, produced no effect. In
March, 1565, Elizabeth announced her final decision in
terms which were even more disappointing than those
of Cecil's letter ; for she declared that, until she herself
had married or had resolved not to marry, the suc-
1 Foreign Calendar, 1564-1565, No. 864. z Ibid. No. 877.
3 Ibid. Nos. 882, 957 ; Tytler, vi. 317.
132 MAITLAND AND MAKY STEWART, 1561-1567
cession must remain unsettled.1 Maitland and Moray,
who had been "worked up to great agonies and
passions," saw at once that the end had come. The
former politely intimated to Randolph that he could
not counsel his mistress " to drive any more time " ;
and Moray, we are told, was " the sorrowfullest man
that can be." :
Meanwhile Lord Darnley had followed his father to
Scotland ; and Mary, who was now convinced that
nothing was to be gained by Elizabeth's goodwill, re-
solved to dare her displeasure by allying herself with
the hope of the English Catholics. In April Maitland
was despatched to London to announce her intention of
marrying Darnley, and to solicit Elizabeth's concur-
rence. The matter was formally debated at a meeting
of the English Privy Council ; and the Council unani-
mously condemned the match as prejudicial to both
sovereigns and to the weal of the two nations.
Opposition, however, was to be feared at home as well
as abroad. The Queen's resolution to marry Darnley
brought her into conflict with Moray, and in her
manner of executing it she gave offence to Maitland.
Moray had for some time been growing alarmed at the
tendency of the succession dispute to bring about a
rupture with England. His show of firmness in the
recent negotiations had probably been discounted by
Cecil as a concession to his masterful colleague ; for on
the eve of the Berwick conference he had secretly sent
assurances of his devotion to Queen Elizabeth.3 He
was a more zealous Protestant than Maitland, and he had
some reason to dread the consequences of a match
1 Froude, vii. 248.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1564-1565, No. 1047 ; Tytler, vi. 306.
3 Froude, vii. 225.
MORAY'S REBELLION 133
which was welcomed by the English Catholics, and was
formally approved by the Pope and the King of Spain.
When, therefore, neither Elizabeth's remonstrances nor
his own availed to turn Mary from her purpose, he set
himself to organise a resistance, which took shape,
indeed, but only when too late for its primary object.
Mary and Darnley were married early on the morning
of July 29, 1565 ; a month before, Moray had joined
hands with Knox by countenancing a protest of the
General Assembly against the Queen's Mass ; and in
the middle of August he and his friends Chatelherault,
Argyll, Glencairn, and others convened at Ayr to
concert measures for a rising. If the Congregation in
1559 had been dependent on external support, Moray
and his party were powerless without it. The mass of
the Protestants were kept aloof by renewed promises of
toleration ; the Lennox faction was strong enough to
hold the Hamiltons in check ; and Mary and Darnley
monopolised between them all hope of a Scottish suc-
cession in England. Thus, after a fugitive insurrection
of a few weeks, known to tradition afe the Run-about-
Raid, the rebels threw up the game ; and October found
them on the other side of the Border. Elizabeth had
encouraged them with the most explicit assurances of
support. She had sent them money, had despatched a
warship to the Forth, and had kept 300 men in readi-
ness at Carlisle ; l but she declined to pledge herself
further to so weak a movement ; and when Moray went
up to London to plead the common cause, he was
publicly disowned and insulted in presence of the French
and Spanish ambassadors.
If Maitland, as Randolph believed,2 was on the point
of joining the insurrection, his distrust of Cecil had no
1 Foreign Calendar, 1564-1565, Nos. 1491, 1556. 2 Ibid. No. 1557.
134 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
doubt deterred him ; and Moray's treatment at the
hands of Elizabeth must have confirmed his worst
suspicions. The probability is, however, that he was
never at all in doubt as to his course of action. On the
assumption, at which he had now arrived, that Elizabeth
would never do anything for the Stewart succession, the
Lennox alliance was the best that could be made ; and
it is one of many facts all pointing in the same direction
that Darnley's first night in Scotland was spent at
Lethington.1 On the other hand, a Catholic queen
contracting a marriage, which had the approval of
Catholics at home and abroad, would require careful
guiding — the more so, as Mary had recently shown a
preference for other counsels than Maitland's ; and the
amity of England, however little might be gained by it,
was not to be lightly thrown away. The true key to
Maitland's position is probably to be found in one of
Randolph's somewhat contradictory reports. On the
3rd of May he writes that the Secretary was suspected
to be more favourable to Darnley than he would seem,
but that the Lennox faction spoke despitefully of him,
because he had written to Moray " that he should
persuade the queen to make no haste in the matter, but
keep it in the stay it was,, when he left it."2 Haste,
however, was to be the chief characteristic of Mary's con-
duct. Maitland was on his way back from London, when
he was met at Newark by despatches from the Queen,
which required him to return at once and tell Elizabeth
that she had resolved to marry where she pleased with
the consent of her Estates, and then to seek assistance
1 Skel ton's Maitland of Lethington and the Scotland of Mary Stewart, ii.
144. It surely says much for Sir John Skelton's breadth of judgment
that he should be the apologist both of Mary and of her great minister.
2Tytler, vi. 330.
CHARACTER OF MARY 135
at the French Court. In defiance of these instructions,
he continued his journey, overtook Sir Nicholas Throck-
morton, the English ambassador, at Alnwick, and instead
of staying him, as he had orders to do, proceeded with
him to Edinburgh.1 Sir Nicholas was Mary's tried
friend, and a strong supporter of her right of succession.
He had heard from Kandolph how the affair was being
pushed on in Scotland ; and when he communicated the
news to Maitland, the latter was so indignant that he
" never saw him in so great perplexity and passion, and
would little have believed that for any matter he could
have been so moved." 2
The difference between Mary and Maitland on the
question of the Darnley marriage had its roots in
an antagonism of personal character. If they pursued
the same aim, they could do so only in a different
spirit. Mary was no stateswoman. With so entirely
feminine a mind as hers, Maitland, when he came into
contact with it in politics, could have no real sympathy.
She wished to be Queen of England, and in that wish he
cordially supported her; but, while Maitland regarded
the Stewart succession as a means of healing the breach
of centuries in a manner most honourable to Scotland,
with Mary it was wholly a matter of personal ambition.
1 M. Philippson (vol. ii. 357) is unsparing in his condemnation of this
" black and impudent treason " — more especially as Maitland showed
Throckmorton the Queen's letters. But Throckmorton was one of Mary's
well-wishers ; and M. Philippson admits (p. 351) that Maitland had some
reason to be angry. In good truth, could anything be more outrageous
than that Mary should despatch her principal minister to solicit
Elizabeth's consent to a marriage, which, unknown to him, she had
already concluded "sous ^impulsion (Pun aventurier Stranger "? M.
Philippson believes that Mary was secretly married to Darnley in Biccio's
chamber between the 7th and the 10th of April ; and on the 13th she
sent Maitland to London.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1564-1565, No. 1159.
136 / MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
She had as little patriotism as Knox, and she was far
from being as devoted a Catholic as Knox was a Pro-
testant.1 How easily she had accommodated herself to
the Eeformation we have already seen. In after years
she married Bothwell, whose humour it was to pose as a
zealous Reformer ; she married him according to the
Protestant rites ; and she consented at his request to
give up her Mass and to recall the permission she had
granted in 1566 for the public exercise of the old
religion. To Bothwell, indeed, she sacrificed both her
creed and her ambition ; but at the time of her marriage
with Darnley the love of power was still her pre-
dominant passion. Indignant that she had gained so
little by her policy of conciliation at home and abroad,
she resolved to break with Protestantism both in
Scotland and in England, to defy Elizabeth, to restore
Catholicism, and to humble the power of the nobles.
In one respect wounded patriotism was carrying
Maitland in the same direction ; but he moved in too
large an orbit for his impetuous mistress. Unwilling to
throw aside one project of union before he had made
sure of another, he would have had her avoid an open
quarrel with Elizabeth till she had consolidated her
party amongst the English Catholics ; he had no
desire to overthrow the Reformation ; he had a great
regard for the aristocracy ; and a man less qualified to
be the pliant tool of despotism it would be difficult to
conceive. For some time before the Darnley marriage
Maitland's influence with the Queen had been visibly
declining ; and in David Riccio, a Catholic and a
foreigner wholly dependent on her favour, she had
1 " For her own freedom of will and of way, of passion and of action,
she cared much ; for her creed she cared something ; for her country she
cared less than nothing." — Swinburne : Miscellanies.
CHARACTER OF MARY 137
found a servant, who had no ideas of his own and no
interests which could conflict with hers.
It was only the accident of her birth that had made
a politician of Mary Stewart. A strong, fearless,
generous, revengful, high-spirited woman, she felt too
keenly the joy of living to care much for distant and
impalpable results ; and as politics proved more and
more disappointing to her love of power, the flood of
passion within her overflowed into another channel.
From the time, when she resolved to marry Darnley —
from motives of policy indeed, but in a very impolitic
spirit — she was no longer the patient schemer of her
early days in Scotland ; and the assassination of Riccio
in March, 1566, which dissipated her dreams of absolu-
tism, and added hatred to contempt for a brutal and
imbecile husband, cut her finally adrift on the downward
course. Thus for two years Scottish history was absorbed
into the biography of this brilliant woman ; and it was
fortunate for Maitland that at such a period his own
private life was more than usually interesting. In
September, 1564, we hear of him as suitor to Mary
Fleming,1 one of the four Maries ; and in October of the
following year Randolph writes to Cecil that the
Secretary " has leisure to make love, and in the end, as
wise as he is, will show himself a fool." 2 As Maitland
did not marry his second wife till January, 1567, his
folly must have required two and a half years for its
probation ; and we know enough of the union so well
tested in the making to be sure that it proved a happy
one.
It would be idle, however, to deny that there was a
darker side to Maitland's life during these two eventful
ears. That the drama then in progress was not at all
1 Foreign Calendar, 1564-1565, No. 680. 2 Ibid. No. 1638.
138 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
to his liking may be inferred from the attitude towards
him of all the leading actors. With Mary he had now
little influence ; Kiccio was his natural enemy ; Darnley
was never tired of denouncing him to the Queen ;
Bothwell regarded him with the most bitter detestation,
and as early as February, 1563, is said "divers ways"
to have sought his life.1 In point of scrupulosity
Maitland was certainly not superior to the men of his
age and country. If he had never been in favour of
hasty and violent expedients, it was doubtless only
because they were wholly unsuited to the ends he had in
view ; and at a time, when statesmanship had abdicated
its functions, he could have no objection to get rid of
his enemies by helping them to exterminate each other.
Although he was careful to conceal his designs, he
undoubtedly helped Darnley to make away with Riccio,
and Bothwell to make away with Darnley. The guilt
of these tragedies is too widely diffused to be of
much use to those, who delight in the personalities of
history. Both Knox and Cecil were cognisant of the
plot against Riccio ; 2 and Moray's share was no less
criminal and much more humiliating than Maitland's.
In order to facilitate his return from exile he not only
joined the conspiracy, but even pledged himself to obtain
the crown matrimonial for the man whose marriage with
the Queen he had taken up arms to prevent ; and he so
completely deceived Mary that, on his arrival the day
after the murder, she welcomed him as a deliverer.
Unlike Maitland, he did not commit himself on paper
to the design against Darnley ; but he allowed words to
be used in his presence, the import of which he could
not fail to understand ; and the conspirators must have
1 Foreign Calendar, 1563, No. 370 ; Randolph to Cecil.
2 See pp. 110-111.
MURDER OF DARNLEY 139
supposed that what they were doing had his entire
approval.
Few deeds of blood have been more swiftly and
more terribly avenged than the murder of Darnley ;
and Maitland's assent to the crime was a prodigious
blunder both in his own interest and in that of his
sovereign. The Queen had lived so unhappily with her
husband that her guilt was at once suspected both in
France and England ; and in the latter country the
prospects of the Stewart succession were suddenly
overcast. When the conspirators laid their account
with some such result as this, it did not occur to them
that Mary would virtually plead guilty by marrying
the murderer, Bothwell. Her partiality for this man
had long been notorious ; but, if Maitland had for a
moment supposed that the Queen, whose ambition it had
been to match with the heir of the Spanish Empire,
would throw herself away on a profligate baron, the
husband of a woman, whom he had married only a year
before, he would have been slow indeed to burden his
conscience to so little purpose.
Bothwell's adroitness in turning the murder to his
own personal advantage placed his accomplices in a very
awkward position. Not only Maitland, but Argyll, Sir
James Balfour, and Huntly had signed a bond for the
removal of the " young fool and proud tyrant by one
way or another as a measure of state ; and the plot
had been revealed both to Moray and to the Earl of
Morton. With the exception of Huntly, they were all
more or less eager to arrest the career of Bothwell ; and
yet it was certain that, if any movement took shape
against him, it would turn on his being the author of the
late king's death. Darnley was murdered on the
morning of the 10th February, 1567. In the beginning
140 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
of May, as the real motive of the crime became more
and more apparent, the nobles began to draw together
at Stirling ; on the fifteenth of that month Mary was
married to Bothwell ; and at Carberry Hill on the
fifteenth of June, in the scorching heat of a midsummer
Sunday,1 she bade farewell to her husband and his few
dispirited followers, and gave herself up to the con-
federate lords. In the evolution of these events Maitland
hesitated longer over his course of action than any of his
fellow conspirators. Though Bothwell knew him to be
his enemy and kept him in daily fear of his life, he
remained with the Queen till the 6th of June ; and
when the Earl of Athol would have taken the lead in
avenging the murdered prince, Maitland was honest
enough to dissuade him.2 Once, however, he had gone
over to the Confederates, he had, of course, to adopt the
official phraseology ; and it need not surprise us to find
him asking aid from Cecil " for the further execution of
justice against such as shall be found guilty of an
abominable murder."3 It was doubtless with a view to
concealing the hypocrisy of such language that Bothwell
was allowed to escape unopposed from the field of
Carberry Hill. And yet the murder may really have
seemed "abominable" to Maitland, when he saw that it
had relieved the Queen of one obnoxious husband only
to make room for another.
Maitland' s appearance in arms against the Queen is
easily explained — he strove to dissolve her ruinous
marriage with Bothwell as he afterwards strove to avert
1 It seems that one cause of the lords' success in the averted battle at
Carberry was that " they were supported with store of drink, whilk was
a great relief against drowth in sik exceeding heat of the year." — Historic
of King James the Sext (Bannatyne Club), p. 12.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1566-1568, No. 1170, May 4 ; Drury to Cecil.
slbid. No. 1330.
MAITLAND'S DEFENCE 141
its consequences. It is more difficult to understand why
he should have concurred with the lords in forcing Mary
to abdicate in favour of her son. According to the
account which he himself gave several years later, the
lords, when they rose in rebellion, had no intention of
deposing Mary ; and if she had consented to put away
Bothwell, they would have remained true to their
allegiance. They had supposed that the whole nation
would approve of her imprisonment at Lochleven as the
best means of sequestrating her from her husband ; but,
when they found that a majority of the nobles adhered
to the Queen against themselves, they wrere forced in
self-defence to take shelter under the authority of the
young king. This, however, was " but a fetch or shift "
devised to meet a passing emergency — as if one were to
leap from a burning boat into the sea, and then in fear
of drowning wrere to clutch again at the boat ; he had
always represented the matter in this light to Moray ;
and many could bear him witness that within a month
after the latter accepted the Regency, he had pressed
him to come to terms with the Queen.1 This apology,
on the face of it, is not very convincing, and in one
respect it may easily be disproved ; for, though the lords
professed to have taken arms merely to avenge the
murder of Darnley and to deliver the Queen from
Bothwell, the desire of some of them — and these
probably the majority — to crown the prince had so long
been known in England that Elizabeth had expressed
her disapproval of it as early as the middle of May.2
Maitland, however, had a far stronger plea in reserve ;
1 Calderwood, iii. 79-87 ; interview between Maitland and certain
representatives of the King's party in May, 1571 ; also Maitland to
Sussex, July 16, 1570.— Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 1144.
2Tytler, vii. 101.
142 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
and the true explanation of his conduct is one, which, at
the time when these words were used, it was not con-
venient to mention.
More urgent than any question as to the fate of
Mary's crown was the question of her personal safety.
For many weeks she was in the most serious danger,
partly because Knox was daily infusing into the people
his own merciless spirit, and partly because the
Hamiltons, who professed to be her friends, were really
anxious for her death. When Throckmorton came to
Edinburgh to intercede on Elizabeth's behalf for the
captive Queen, he heard some things, which greatly
astonished him. He had supposed that the Confederates
had provoked opposition through their severity to the
Queen ; and Maitland assured him, on the faith of a
Christian man, that if they took Mary's life, all who now
opposed them would be at their side in two days. That
very morning Archbishop Hamilton and Huntly, with
the concurrence of Argyll, had sent to propose that she
should be put to death ; " and to be plain with you," he
added, " there be very few amongst ourselves, which be
of any other opinion."1 Of that honourable minority,
Maitland himself was by far the most conspicuous mem-
ber. Buchanan, indeed, has asserted in the Chameleon
that he " would have had the Queen slain by Act of
Parliament," and that he even solicited some men " to
gar hang her on her bed with her own belt."2 No
grosser falsehood is to be found in that mendacious
O
pamphlet. Both Throckmorton and Sir James Melville
1 Tytler, vii. 144 ; Throckmorton to Elizabeth, August 9, 1567.
2 Chameleon, pp. 17, 18. AVhen Randolph, some years later, taxed
Maitland with this charge, he merely echoed Buchanan. See his letter
(undated) to Maitland and Kirkcaldy in Strype's Annals, vol. ii. appendix
ix. He was not in Scotland from June, 1566, to the early part of 1570,
and cannot be regarded as an independent witness.
MARY'S "BURNING FEVER" 143
represent Maitland as the chief of those who were "best
affected " towards the Queen ; according to Throck-
morton, he had " travelled with sundry of the wisest to
make them desist" from all proceedings against her;1
and he alone of the Council — " fortified with a very
slender company in this opinion " —would have had her
restored to liberty, and to her royal estate, under secu-
rities for the banishment of Bothwell, and the preserva-
tion of the prince.2
To Bothwell, however, Mary was obstinately, if not
heroically, faithful ; 3 and Maitland, who wished her to be
queen of all the world, and bitterly lamented to Throck-
morton his inability to help her,4 was forced to treat her
as temporarily insane — " one sick of a vehement burning
fever," refusing everything that would do her good, and
requiring everything that would work her harm. Sir
James Melville tells us in his Memoirs that his brother,
Sir Robert, was sent by Maitland and several others to
the Queen at Lochleven to advise her to comply with
the demand for her resignation, on the plea that any-
thing she did in prison would be legally invalid. The
Secretary no doubt believed that something must be
thrown to the wolves, which were pursuing his mistress
to the death ; but he can hardly have failed to see that
her resignation of the crown was the likeliest of all
1 Skelton, ii. 259.
2 Keith, ii. 685 ; Throckmorton to Cecil, July 19, 1567.
3 " She will by no means yield to abandon Bothwell for her husband,
nor relinquish him ; which matter will do her most harm of all, and
hardeneth these lords to great severity against her." — Throckmorton to
Elizabeth, July 18, 1567 ; Robertson, appendix xxi.
4 " Do you not see that it doth not lie in my power to do that I fainest
would do, which is to have the Queen my mistress in estate, in person,
and in honour ? " — Maitland's words as reported by Throckmorton to
Cecil ; Skelton, ii. 259.
144 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
means to win it back. He knew that the Hamiltons
wished Mary to be put to death, because there would
then be nothing " but the little king betwixt them and
home." But he also knew that they had hesitated
between this scheme and one for her marriage with the
Duke's son, the Commendator of Arbroath ; and if Mary
saved her life by resigning the crown, and the govern-
ment was administered by the opposite faction in name
of the prince, they would seek her restoration in their
own interest. Such, at least, was the course of events ;
and whether he foresaw it or not, Maitland could not
wisely have acted otherwise than he did. It was not
Maitland who betrayed Mary, but Mary who, in her
frenzy of love for Bothwell, betrayed both herself and
him.
On July 24, 1567, Mary abdicated in favour of the
prince, and appointed the Earl of Moray to be Regent
during her son's minority. On the 29th James was
crowned at Stirling; on the llth of August, Moray,
who had been in France since the murder of Darnley,
arrived at Edinburgh ; and on the 22nd he was formally
proclaimed Regent. These proceedings gave great
offence at the English Court. Throckmorton expostu-
lated and protested at every step ; and when Elizabeth
realised the conclusion, to which events were tending,
she ordered him to tell the lords that she would
make an example of them to all posterity, if they
determined anything to the deprivation of the Queen.1
Elizabeth's interference was keenly resented by Mait-
land. The crowning of the prince was not his
policy, as Throckmorton very well knew ; but he
had come to regard it as the only way of escape
from a perilous situation, and he was very indig-
1 Foreign Calendar, 1566-1568, No. 1526.
ANTI-ENGLISH FEELING 145
nant that he and his friends should be denounced
as "perjured rebels and unnatural traitors" for play-
ing a part, which they cordially disliked, in their
sovereign's interest.
From the tenor of Throckmorton's letters we may
easily see how far the patriotism of the Scots — at all
events as interpreted by Maitland — was getting the
better of their instinct of union. The lords, it seemed,
feared Elizabeth more than the French or any contrary
faction at home ; they remembered her treatment of
Moray and the other refugees ; and they were fully per-
suaded that, if they ran her fortune, she would leave
them in the briars. They would not allow Throck-
morton to have access to the Queen, because they had
just refused that favour to the French ambassador; and
Elizabeth's dealings with them hitherto had not been
such that they could afford to dispense with the amity
of France. It was useless to speak of sending the prince
to England, unless his right of succession was estab-
lished in Parliament ; otherwise they would act as those
who give the sheep to be kept by the wolves ; and the
subjects of such a queen as Elizabeth might see " a
strange and dangerous issue," if all their goods (i.e.
heirs to the crown) were adventured in one ship. If
sincere, as doubtless they were, Throckmorton's re-
monstrances on behalf of Mary were very injudicious ;
but Maitland believed, and did not scruple to say,
that he was playing the part of the Hamiltons —
speaking always of liberty, but having nothing less
in his heart. They could not restore Mary in her
present infatuation for Bothwell ; and if Elizabeth
was resolved to insist on so unreasonable a demand,
she might make war, if she chose. Threats would
accomplish nothing ; for they were the subjects of
146 MAITLAND AND MARY STEWART, 1561-1567
another prince, and knew not the Queen of England
for their sovereign.1
As Mary was a Catholic, and the party which opposed
her was mainly, though not entirely, Protestant, the
success of the revolution brought with it the establish-
ment of the Reformed Church. This in itself was a
very desirable result ; but unfortunately it was accom-
plished in a manner which detracted very greatly from
its value. Mary was more than a Catholic. Contrary
to her own wishes, she had become the embodiment
of compromise in Scotland, the hope of all who believed
that religion, however vitally important, is not the sum
and substance of a nation's life ; and her fall was
a triumph of extreme principles, tempered only in
practice by the sagacity and the selfishness of their
professed adherents. It is true that Mary was by no
means a martyr to her faith, that she fell rather through
her indifference than through her devotion to Catho-
licism ; but this consideration could have no weight
with men who regarded every evil that befell their
adversaries as evidence of the divine displeasure. The
reformed clergy were the natural patrons of all attempts
against a Catholic queen. Moray had sought the co-
operation of Knox in his rising against Darnley ; Riccio
had been helped to his end by sermons on the hanging
of Haman ; four days before they crowned the prince, the
1 Substance of letters, July 12, August 22, 1567 ; Eobertson, appendix
xxi.; Tytler, vii. 155-157 ; Keith, ii. 742-744. Maitland's speeches, as re-
ported by Throckmorton, are the best proof both of his eloquence and of
his overpowering force of character. Even Bishop Keith was impressed :
" In all Lethington's discourses the great man still shines." — ii. 744, note.
These letters, it may be observed, do not at all support Froude's conten-
tion that, if Elizabeth had recognised James as her successor, Maitland
would have thrown over Mary Stewart. He merely insists that the
child could not be sent to England on any other condition.
THE CHURCH ESTABLISHED 147
lords had pledged themselves in the Assembly to root out
idolatry, and to confirm the Reformation statutes ; and
the Parliament of December, 1567, which established
the new Church, declared that the Queen " was privy art
and part of the actual device and deed of the murder of
the king, her lawful husband." Of the December
Parliament something will be said in another place ; but
it may be mentioned here that in this, as in the more
famous Parliament of 1560, Maitland delivered the
opening address. Now, however, he looked rather to the
past than to the future, for the close of the Eeformation
had not fulfilled the promise of its birth ; and when he
reminded his hearers that they had attained to their
present liberties " sleeping as it were upon down beds,"
they may have accepted it as a dexterous vindication of
his own policy. He had made them wait; and in
waiting they had got without bloodshed what Knox
would have had them seize earlier at the cost of civil
war.
CHAPTER V.
CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573.
HISTORICALLY, the year 1567 is memorable for the final
establishment of the Reformation in Scotland ; but con-
temporaries may very well have doubted whether the
work of that year would be attended by such decisive
results. The return of Mary Stewart had arrested the
progress of the Reformation in 1561 ; and it was by no
means certain that the deposed queen might not one
day be restored to power. Religion was still dependent
for its future on political forces, the course of which was
only slightly within its control. The triumph of Pro-
testantism, which was involved in the success of the
revolution, was very far from being its primary object.
Amongst the most prominent leaders were Catholics,
such as the Earl of Athol and Lord Home, the former of
whom protested against the religious legislation of 1567
as he had protested against that of 1560 ; and the party
was really divided into two sections — those who had
avenged the murder of Darnley to the ruin of the
Queen, and those who had utilised that crime as a
means of separating her, in her own interest, from
Bothwell. To the first section belonged the Earls of
MARY IN ENGLAND 149
Moray, Morton, Lennox, and Glencairn ; to the second,
Maitland, his brother-in-law, the Earl of Athol, Kirk-
caldy of Grange, and Lord Home. That the Confederates
held together so long as they did was due to Mary's
devotion to her obnoxious husband. On the 2nd of
May, 1568, she escaped from her island prison in Loch-
leven ; on the 1 3th the royalists of the Hamilton
faction were routed at Langside, and she herself fled
southward, ninety miles, to the verge of Solway, whence
next morning she took boat to the Cumberland shore.
As Mary's "vehement burning fever" had not yet
abated, she failed to profit at this crisis from the dis-
union of her opponents. She was known to be eager
for revenge, and though Bothwell was now an exile in
Denmark, she was as devoted to him as ever. She de-
spatched a message to him on the night of her escape ;
and she wrote to him again, urging his return, after her
flight into England.
The coalition, however, did not long survive the
consequences of its victory at Langside ; and the blow,
which dissolved it, came from a very unexpected
quarter. Elizabeth had beguiled Mary to England
through her extravagant professions of friendship ; and
she showed herself so hostile to the new Government
that Maitland once hinted to Throckmorton that they
might be forced in self-defence to reveal the true
history of the Darnley murder. But, with Mary in
safe keeping at Carlisle, Elizabeth's policy rapidly as-
sumed a new face. Moray was virtually recognised as
Regent ; the English wardens on the Border encouraged
him in those severities against the royalists which
Maitland was deprecating as the seeds of civil war ; and
when Mary offered to dispel the aspersions of her
enemies, Elizabeth seized upon this as the pretext for a
150 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
judicial investigation, in which commissioners appointed
by both parties should plead before certain other com-
missioners appointed by herself.
Whether the Queen or the Regent was to be the
defendant in this singular suit, it was too suggestive of
Edward I.'s adjudication at Berwick to be at all popular
in Scotland ; and, moreover, the question of Mary's
guilt had already been decided against her by the
Scottish Parliament. Maitland strenuously opposed the
sending of commissioners ; and if in the end he yielded
so far as to go with them, it was partly because Moray
thought it dangerous to leave him behind, and
partly because he was anxious to render " such extreme
folly" as innocuous as possible. His object was to
ensure such a defence of the late revolution as should
justify it merely as a movement against Both well and
his marriage with the Queen ; and he hoped to gain this
through his influence with the friends of the Scottish
succession in England, to whom, as he was aware, the
Queen's own commissioners were almost unknown.1 It
was thought that Moray himself would conform to this
scheme ; but discovering at the last moment that he
" was wholly bent to utter all he could," Maitland wrote
in great alarm to Mary at Bolton, enclosing copies of
the letters to be produced against her, which his wife
had procured, and assuring her of his desire to be of
service.2
When the proceedings opened at York on October 5,
1568, an incident occurred, which must have con-
firmed the Scots in their worst suspicions. Mary's
commissioners, before taking the oath, protested that
their mistress, as a sovereign princess, could recog-
nise Elizabeth as arbiter only, not as judge ; and either
1 Melville's Memoirs, p. 205. 2Tytler, vii. 196.
THE ENGLISH OVERLORDSHIP 151
in anticipation of this protest, or in reply to it, Moray
and his associates were required to acknowledge the
feudal superiority of the English crown ; " whereat,"
says one who was present, " the Regent grew red and
wist not what to answer, but the secretary Liddington
took the speech, and said that in restoring again to
Scotland the lands of Huntingdon, Cumberland, and
Northumberland, with such other lands as Scotland had
of old, that gladly should homage be made for the said
lands ; but as to the crown and kingdom of Scotland, it
was freer than England had been lately, when it paid
St. Peter's penny to the Pope." l It is significant that
on this the last occasion on which the English over-
lordship was ever publicly avowed, it should have been
repelled by Maitland ; for no one realised more vividly
than he, the strenuous advocate of union, that national
greatness can be built only on the foundations of the
past.
Queen Mary looked forward with confidence to the
result of an inquiry, in which her subjects were to be
called to task for their undutiful conduct ; and she had
some reason to believe that the worst charges would not
be preferred against her. Moray himself had connived
at the murder ; of his fellow commissioners, Morton was
only one degree less guilty than Maitland, and Bishop
Bothwell of Orkney had actually celebrated the marriage
between his titular namesake and the Queen ; and what
is stranger than anything else, the president of the
English commission, which was to sit in judgment on
the revolt against Mary's third husband, and perhaps
also on the murder of the second, was himself desirous
of being married to her as his fourth wife. The Duke
of Norfolk, though a Protestant, was the hope of the
1 Melville's Memoirs, p. 206.
152 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
English Catholics ; and the Catholics were already
intriguing for his marriage with the Queen of Scots.
On the eve of the conference he had sent Mary assur-
ances of his goodwill, which she in turn had communi-
cated to Maitland ; and she had heard indirectly, and
apparently without displeasure, of his matrimonial
aspirations. It appears from an entry in Cecil's Diary
that Maitland had originally preferred Norfolk to
Darnley — doubtless on personal grounds — as a husband
for the Queen j1 and he now entered so heartily into the
marriage project that it was supposed in some quarters
to have originated with himself.
On the fifth day of the conference, the first three
having been spent in preliminaries, Maitland and Norfolk
rode out together on pretence of hunting ; and it shows
how little truth there is in the story of his duplicity
towards the Regent that Maitland himself urged the
Duke to make a confidant of Moray. This Norfolk,
after some hesitation, consented to do ; and next morning,
in a private interview with Moray, he strove to dissuade
him from proceeding to extremities against the Queen.
He said that Elizabeth did not mean to pronounce
sentence, whatever might be alleged against her ; nothing,
therefore, would be gained by the accusation ; and to
blacken Mary's name might prejudice her son's title and
her own to the crown of England. Moray entered so
much into the spirit of these remonstrances that he kept
them secret from all but Maitland and Sir James
Melville ; in the presence of the former he pledged
himself to Norfolk not to accuse the Queen ; and on
October 11 he replied formally to the indictment of
Mary's commissioners on the minor plea of her marriage
with Bothwell.
1 Skelton, ii. 148.
THE WESTMINSTER CONFERENCE 153
So far all seemed to have gone well ; but affairs
entered on a new phase when Elizabeth dissolved the
conference and ordered it to be resumed at Westminster,
ostensibly on the ground of the delay caused by communi-
cating with the commissioners at so great a distance
from Court, but really because she had learned some-
thing of Norfolk's dealings with the Queen. She had
never desired that Mary should emerge without
blemish from the ordeal ; and the discovery of Catholic
intrigues at home, coinciding with the news of Alva's
first successes in the Netherlands, disposed her to still
greater severity. Moray's position on his arrival in
London was by no means a pleasant one. While
Maitland was continually reminding him of his promises
to Norfolk, Elizabeth, on the plea that his defences were
wholly inadequate, urged him to impeach the Queen as
an accomplice in the murder ; his own colleagues pressed
him in the same direction, and having been informed of
his secret practices at York, they had divulged them to
Cecil. Thus, torn asunder between the two parties, he
resolved to yield something to both : he allowed his
secretary to bring the writ of accusation to the council-
chamber, but he intended not to present it till he had
made sure of his ground. To encourage him, the Lord-
Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, declared that, if the Queen
were found guilty, he should be continued in the
Kegency, and she either detained in England or delivered
into his hands ; but it seems he was still hesitating,
when, according to Sir James Melville, Bishop Bothwell,
with the connivance of the secretary, Wood, snatched
the indictment from him, and carried it to the table.
Maitland was absent at the time ; but, when he came in
and was told what had happened, he " roundit in the
Regent's ear that he had shamed himself, and put his
154 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
life in peril by the loss of so good a friend and his
reputation for ever. . . . Master John Wood winked
upon the Secretary Cecil, who smiled again upon him ;
the rest of the Regent's company were laughing upon
other ; the Secretary Lethington had a sair heart." l
In support of his accusation Moray brought forward
the famous Casket Letters, which had been privately
exhibited to the English commissioners at York ; and
Norfolk's warning that Elizabeth did not mean to
decide one way or another, was made good in form only,
not in substance. Cecil delivered judgment to the
effect that neither party had succeeded in proving its
charges against the other ; but, whilst Mary was detained
a prisoner, her brother went home with Elizabeth's
approval to his government in Scotland.
But, if Moray had secured his political future, he had
done so at a very considerable cost. In accusing the
Queen he had broken with the moderate section of his
own party ; he had highly offended Norfolk, whose
friends in the north of England were conspiring, as he
knew, to assassinate him on his way home ; and he
happened to be in great need of money. When, there-
fore, Maitland reasoned with him on his lapse from
honesty, he affected to listen in a very penitent spirit ;
and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, on the ground that
"his gentle nature" had been abused by Cecil and his
own colleagues, contrived to patch up a reconciliation
between him and Norfolk. In this second engagement
Moray gave his cordial assent to the Duke's marriage
with Mary ; he promised to further the scheme in
1 Melville, p. 212. Melville's Memoirs, written from memory in his old
age, are not to be relied on in points of detail. But he was thoroughly
honest and a shrewd observer ; and he may be safely trusted for the
substance of transactions, in which he himself was an actor.
THE PERTH CONVENTION 155
Scotland, and he sent Sir Robert Melville to negotiate
in his name with the Queen ; in return for which con-
cessions the Duke became surety in his favour to
Elizabeth for a loan of £5000. By this means Moray
secured a safe passage to the Border — the Earl of
Westmoreland making a demonstration on the way to
convince him of the danger he had escaped ; and at the
same time he disarmed the hostility of Mary's adherents
in Scotland. He reached Edinburgh on the second of
February, 1569 ; and in July — though much had
happened in the interval — the value of his promises to
Norfolk was brought sharply to trial.
In that month a convention was held at Perth to
consider certain proposals of Elizabeth for the Queen's
return, and a request of the Queen herself that judges
should be appointed to pronounce on the validity of her
marriage with Both well. Elizabeth's proposals were
not taken very seriously ; but the question of the
Bothwell marriage divided the Confederates for the first
and last time on a clear and decisive issue. The two
parties, which had hitherto held the same road, had now
come to the parting of the ways. Mary had recovered
from her " vehement, burning fever " ; Bothwell was an
exile ; she was willing, even anxious, to be released from
him ; and to force her to this the Confederates professed
originally to have taken arms. In spite of his engage-
ments to Norfolk, Moray influenced the Perth Conven-
tion to reject Mary's request ; l and Maitland, taunting
his opponents with that inconsistency, which was hence-
forward to be the principal charge against himself,
withdrew with his brother-in-law to Blair Athol. In
September Moray retaliated by having him accused as
1 " Lethington and the reat of her favourers opposed mightily, and
raged, but prevailed not." — Calderwood, ii. 490.
156 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
one of Bothwell's accomplices in the murder ; and a few
weeks later, when the Norfolk conspiracy was detected
and crushed in England, he made his peace with
Elizabeth by sending her all the Duke's letters. If he
really supposed that his late colleague would consent to
act a similar part, he had to acknowledge his mistake.
Maitland, he told Cecil, " had flatly denied in any sort
to be an accuser of the Duke of Norfolk." l
Moray's dealings with Norfolk are one of several stains
on a character, which, if not more than conventionally
good, was still further from being great. A precise
Protestant, decorous beyond the verge of austerity, with
a household which is said to have been more like a
church than a court, he was sufficiently sinful to connive
in his own interest at the sins of others ; he had little
sense of honour ; and his religion, though sincere, was
of too coarse a texture to hamper him in the niceties of
political life. As a statesman, he seldom acted on his
own initiative. Sir James Melville, who used to quote
Solomon to him " at all erroneous occasions," describes
him as so much at the mercy of his associates "that, as
company chanced to fall about him, his business went
right or wrong " ; 2 and what Melville observed in the
details of personal intercourse is apparent even to us in
the outline of history. It was not that Moray was
weak — for he was an able administrator, and in the
rough work of the Reformation war he acquitted himself
admirably, but that his nature, cold, formal, cautious,
excellent only as a type of mediocrity, was continually
overborne by natures stronger and more prodigal than
1 Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 499.
2 Memoirs, p. 222. Melville is confirmed by Hume of Godscroft, who
says that "Morton did many things without Murray, but Murray
nothing without Morton." — Souses of Douglas and Angus, ii. 198.
CONSISTENCY OF MAITLAND 157
his own. The zeal of Knox, the passionate insight of
Maitland, the imperious temper of Elizabeth — to each of
these he submitted in turn ; and through his sub-
servience to England, natural enough in so good a
Protestant, he compromised both his personal dignity
and his country's honour.
As we have now come to the end of Maitland's crooked
dealing, it may be well to sum up the case against
him. If Bothwell could be prosecuted only as the
murderer of Darnley, and if Mary's deposition was the
only means to save her life and perhaps also to restore
her to power, the question is not whether Maitland
betrayed Mary, but whether, in his fidelity to her, he
did not deceive his associates. That he did deceive
them is exceedingly improbable. He made no secret of
his desire to have Mary restored ; he laboured inces-
santly to effect a compromise ; and Moray could not
plead ignorance of his designs when he brought him to
the conference at York. Maitland, however, had done
enough to blot out his rectitude in the eyes of those
who had no wish to see it ; and the charge of incon-
sistency did not come amiss from the Earl of Sussex,
who as one of the English commissioners had seen him
in company with the accusers of the sovereign, whose
champion he now was. To the taunts of Sussex Mait-
land replied in a very characteristic vein. Even if it
were true that he had changed his mind, that in itself
was no argument against him — non pudet nos errores
nostros revocare ; unwavering conviction was a virtue
only in matters of faith ; in politics circumstances were
all important, and good and evil could be interpreted
with reference to that standard alone. For himself,
however, he was independent of such logic. Though
forced to rank himself with the enemies of the Queen r
158 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
he had always been her friend, as they themselves very
well knew ; and he had "never changed his course from
first to last."1
Although the Perth Convention, by splitting up the
King's party, threatened to re-kindle the *uvil war,
which had been smouldering ever since the battle of
Langside, hostilities did not break out till nearly a year
later. So long as Moray lived, Maitland and his friends
were reluctant to break formally with one who was their
old associate and a regent of their own choosing. Moray,
however, was assassinated at Linlithgow in January,
1570, and from this point events moved rapidly towards
the inevitable conflict.
Moray had made himself exceedingly unpopular
through his subservience to England. When Northum-
berland fled across the Border in November, 1569, after
a vain attempt to sustain the Norfolk conspiracy by
force of arms, the Regent shut him up in Lochleven
Castle, and the mere rumour that he intended to sell
him, as Morton afterwards did, " to the scambles,"
drove the Scots nearly frantic.2 Meanwhile Westmore-
land, the other leader of the rebellion, was ostenta-
tiously befriended by the Queen's faction ; and in
February, 1570, he was joined in exile by Leonard
Dacres, who had fought a pitched battle with the
Government troops on the banks of the Gelt in Cumber-
land. Elizabeth found here a welcome opportunity.
In April she despatched the Earl of Sussex and
1 Froude, ix. 320-322 ; Skelton, ii. 368 ; Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571,
No. 1144.— Maitland to Sussex, July 16, 1570.
2 " All sorts, both men and women, cry out for the liberty of their
country, which is to succour banished men as they themselves have been
received in England not long since, and is the freedom of all countries, as
they allege." — Hunsdon to Cecil, Dec. 30, 1569 ; Foreign Calendar, 1569-
1571, No. 566.
THE WAR RENEWED 159
Lord Scrope with two several forces into Scotland,
ostensibly to chastise those who had harboured her
rebels, as she had harboured Mary's rebels in former
days, but really to humble the Queen's party, which
through the accession of Maitland and his friends
had become inconveniently strong.1 Sussex and Scrope
did their work well, wasting and burning the whole
countryside from Berwick to the Solway. As the
Scottish Borderers had recently made several forays into
England, these excesses might possibly be justified as a
measure of retaliation ; but this pretext was no longer
available, when next month Sir William Drury ad-
vanced to Edinburgh, and in company with Morton
proceeded to destroy the lands and houses of the
Hamiltons throughout West Lothian and Clydesdale.
With Drury on this occasion went the Earl of Lennox ;
in June Lennox was made Lieutenant-Governor, and in
July, on the recommendation of Elizabeth, he was
formally elected Eegent. All hope of peace was now at
an end. In the eyes of the national party Lennox was
" a sworn Englishman," who had betrayed his country
to Henry VIII., and was now come, with English
soldiers, to rule over it as Elizabeth's nominee ; he was
the mortal enemy of the Hamiltons, and as the father of
Darnley he had publicly accused the Queen at York. In
August the war broke out, and Lennox gave a melancholy
foretaste of its character by storming Huntly's castle of
Brechin and hanging thirty-two of the garrison.
At the outset the nation was divided in a manner
which suggests the Wars of the Roses and the civil
war of the following century in England. Although
1 " The King's party daily decays, and if the matter be left to them-
selves, the whole will shortly be on the Queen's side." — Sussex to the
Queen, April 23 ; Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 840.
160 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
the King's party included the Earls of Lennox, Morton,
Mar, and Glencairn, with some half-dozen of the inferior
nobility and a fair proportion of the gentry, its chief
strength lay in the small middle class, which had been
organised by Knox and was a power in all the principal
towns. On the other side, strong in the north and
west and on the Borders, were the great houses of
Hamilton, Argyll, Huntly, Sutherland, and Athol, the
bulk of the aristocracy, both nobles and lairds, and
the mass of the commons. Without the support of
England the King's party must speedily have col-
lapsed, and yet in the opinion of Sussex the strength
of Mary's adherents would be as nothing, if only the
Secretary could be taken from them.1 It seemed,
indeed, as if the truth of this prediction must
shortly be tried, for Maitland was already struggling
with the disease, which was soon — but none too soon
for him — to cut short his career. " I doubt nothing
so much of him," writes Randolph in March, 1570,
" as I do of the length of his life. He hath only his
heart whole and his stomach good, with an honest
mind, somewhat more given to policy than to Mr.
Knox's preachings. His legs are clean gone, his
body so weak that it sustaineth not itself, his inward
parts so feeble that to endure to sneeze he cannot for
annoying the whole body."2 In this crippled condi-
tion, unable to walk or even to stand, and carried
from place to place in a litter, Maitland became the
mainstay of his party, as essential to it as the axle
to the wheel ;3 and so great was the resort to his
1 Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 903.
2 Tytler, vii. 266, 267.
3 Calderwood, ii. 544, who tells us that Maitland " was lusty enough at
his table, both at noon and even."
PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 161
bedside that his lodging in Edinburgh was called the
school, and in allusion to its situation, the Queen's
lords were known as " the lords of the Meal Market."
At every stage of its progress the Scottish Reforma-
tion showed a tendency to fall asunder into two
parties — the men to whom Protestantism was all in
all, and the men who did, indeed, care for Protestan-
tism, but who cared for Scotland more. In the days
of Cardinal Beaton the national party had triumphed
over the religious party ; in the days of Mary of
Lorraine the two parties had fought side by side
against France and Rome ; and the division of interest,
which had begun again with Knox's protest against the
Queen's Mass, and had ever since been growing more
and more acute, now culminated in civil war. It
was in vain that Sir James Melville urged that to
maintain a party for the Queen, whilst she remained
a prisoner, would only compromise her friends in
England and make her captivity the more rigorous ;
for Maitland had resolved, if France and Spain and
the English Catholics could do it, to dethrone Eliza-
beth and to put Mary in her place. Elizabeth it
was who had frustrated his two great schemes of
union — the Arran scheme and the succession scheme ;
he believed that she was detaining Mary merely to
strengthen her own power in Scotland or to weaken
the country through civil war ; and in excess of wrath
he was reported to have said that he would make her
"sit on her tail and whine."1 "It breaks my heart,"
he writes on one occasion, " to see us at this point that
1 Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 933.— Sussex to Cecil, May 17,
1570. These were probably the words which so greatly shocked Buchanan
(Chameleon, p. 24), who, however, was a pitiful railer against his own
Queen.
L
162 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
Englishmen may give us law as they will." l He had
loudly protested against the advance of the English
army, and the bitter indignation with which he contem-
plated the ravages of the invader — 90 castles utterly
destroyed and 300 villages — is apparent from his letter
to Sussex. This was the third journey the English had
made into Scotland since his lordship came to the
Border ; he was glad the troops were to be recalled, as
it was meet they should have a breathing space and
some rest betwixt one exploit and another ; if the amity
between the realms permitted 9f such a phrase, he
would say that they had reasonably well acquitted
themselves of the duty of " auld enemies," and had
burnt and spoiled as much ground in Scotland as
any army of England did in one year these hundred
years, which might suffice for two months, though they
did no more.2
Of Maitland's coadjutors, the bravest and the most
conspicuous was undoubtedly Sir William Kirkcaldy of
Grange. Kirkcaldy was a brilliant soldier, old in
service both at home and abroad, whom Henry II.
in Melville's hearing had characterised as "one of the
most valiant men of our time." Of his zeal for the
Reformation he had early given proof as one of the
slayers of Cardinal Beaton. His Protestantism was so
undoubted that Knox referred to him from the pulpit as
a star fallen from heaven ; and even Knox never
thought so badly of his old associate as not to have
an assurance of mercy for his soul. Politically his
career is not altogether a blameless one ; but as
a man and a soldier he had qualities which won
for him the esteem and admiration both of friends
1 Maitland to Bishop Leslie, August, 1570. — Skeltou, ii. 349.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 1016 ; Tytler, viL 275-276.
THE QUEEN'S LORDS 163
and foes.1 Closely associated with Kirkcaldy was
Lord Home, more Papist than Protestant, brave and
honourable,2 and a Scotsman of the old school, whom
Sussex had made a mortal enemy of England by seizing
and occupying his houses of Home and Fast Castle.
These two men, with the Earl of Athol, had been very
conspicuous against the Queen in the days of her
infatuation for Bothwell. Athol had set the crown on
the prince's head; Home had been one of the Council
of Regency, and both he and Kirkcaldy had greatly
distinguished themselves at the battle of Langside.
Kirkcaldy, indeed, having received the Castle of Edin-
burgh from Moray under an obligation to hold it faith-
fully for the King, was denounced, not unnaturally, as
the worst traitor of all. To the other wing of the party
belonged the Hamiltons and Argyll. Outwardly con-
sistent in their devotion to the Queen, they were now
supporting her for the same reasons of policy which had
formerly led them to plot against her life. Their
loyalty, though good enough of its kind, did not
wear so well as that of their allies ; and Maitland, Kirk-
caldy, and Lord Home, the opponents of Mary in her
hour of folly, were the only men of note who remained
with her to the last.
Despite the obvious tendency of his political schemes
1 " He was humble, gentle and meek like a lamb in the house, but like
a lion in the fields ; a lusty, stark, and well-proportioned personage ;
hardy, and of a magnanym courage ; secret and prudent in all his enter-
prises, so that never ane that he made or devised mislucked when he was
present himself ; and where he was victorious he was very merciful and
naturally liberal, and enemy to greediness and ambition, and friend to all
men in adversity, and fell oft in trouble to debate innocent men from
such as would oppress them." — Melville's Memoirs, pp. 257-258.
2 " An utter enemy to the thieves and void of corruption " is Bedford's
testimony to Home's dealing on the Border. — Foreign Calendar, 1564-
1565, No. 410.
164 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
— a tendency which he regretted as inevitable in a
choice of evils — Maitland had no desire to overturn
the established religion ; but he had a profound
antipathy to Knox, and to the class which Knox
had inoculated with his own theocratic ideas. One
of the manifestoes of the party vindicates its Pro-
testantism in this contemptuous manner : They did not
mean to uproot religion, themselves being the chief
establishers thereof — " Yea, to condescend further (as
the iniquity of the time craves), if the noblemen
now convened, which are of the first places and
greatest number, should pretend (as they mean not)
to seek alteration of the state of religion, as is
seditiously bruited and reported, alas ! in whose
power besides should it consist to withstand it ? " l
And on another occasion, when a deputation of
ministers waited on Maitland and his friends in the
Castle of Edinburgh, the latter " marvelled that they
would take upon them to have anything to do with the
government of the State, which appertained nothing
unto them." 2
Of a dispute, in which Knox and Maitland were
ranged on opposite sides, it might safely be said that no
compromise was possible ; but there was this difference
in the temper of the two factions, that, whilst Maitland
again and again suggested schemes of accommodation,
Knox's party invariably rejected Maitland's schemes
without bringing forward any of their own. The in-
flexibility of the King's lords did not proceed altogether
from religious zeal ; and if we are to believe what
is said of them by their political friends, they were but
a sorry crew. Sir James Melville asserts that the
1 Bannatyne's Memorials, p 29.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 1714.
THE KING'S LORDS 165
attempt of these men to monopolise the offices of state,
coupled, indeed, with the intrigues of England, was the
sole cause of the war. Elizabeth confessed on one
occasion that she knew not how to justify Lennox
against the aspersions of the enemy ; — a Parliament
was to have been summoned to treat of peace, and that
Parliament had done nothing but pass sentences of
forfeiture, contrary to express agreement.1 Sussex
warmly protested against the outlawry of Maitland
in time of truce ; 2 Randolph and Drury exhorted their
friends " to use more moderation in dealing with the
opposite party " ; 3 and so staunch a Protestant as
Lord Hunsdon declared his belief that the King's party
would " never agree to any composition by treaty " —
some because they had " more respect to be revenged
than regard to the commonwealth," some because they
were " resolved to keep such offices, spoils, and
authority as they possess by these troubles." 4 This
last reason seemed so conclusive to Hunsdon that
he returns to it again and again in his letters to
Cecil.
Devotion from very different motives to a common
cause was almost the sole bond of union between the
King's lords and Knox, who was never tired of de-
nouncing them as "merciless devourers of the
patrimony of the Kirk." That the reformed clergy
should have thrown their weight into the scale against
Mary Stewart is not surprising, and they spared no
effort to make their power felt. Knox, as we have
seen, gained an evil notoriety by his extravagant railing
against the Queen. Ministers were ordered by the
Assembly to rebuke any of their parishioners who
1 Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 1776. 2 Tytler, vii. 283.
3 Foreign Calendar, 1572-1574, No. 259. * Ibid. No. 302.
166 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
might adhere to the Queen's side.1 They were to pray
publicly for the King, and all who hindered them in the
discharge of this function were to be " excommunicated
and holden rotten members, unworthy of the society of
Christ's body." 2 In July, 1570, a deputation was
appointed to labour for the conversion of the Queen's
lords, and " to certify them that disobey [that] the
Assembly will use the sword against them, which God
has committed unto them." s The ministers of Edin-
burgh, we are told, hated their own parishioners of the
adverse party no less than if they had been professed
Papists ; and at the close of the struggle the Queen's
citizens had to do public penance for their defection,
standing bareheaded at the church door, and afterwards
in the place of repentance.4
All this, however contrary to modern ideas, may have
been good policy at a time when the interests of the
Reformation were certainly at stake ; but, if we may
not complain of the partisanship of the clergy, its
tendency was sufficiently deplorable. In a pastoral
letter, issued on the eve of the war and undoubtedly the
work of Knox, it was declared that the evils then afflict-
ing the country were due to the sparing of a wicked
woman, in whom the devil himself had been let loose,
and the Queen's adherents were warned that, if they
remained obdurate, they would be given up " to the
power of Satan, to the destruction of the flesh." 5 In
1571 George Buchanan, who, though a layman, had
been moderator of the Assembly, published "An
Admonition to the True Lords," in which with un-
conscious irony he complimented his noble friends on
their " mercifulness in victory," their " clemency in
1 Calderwood, ii. 542. 2 Ibid. Hi. 3. 3 Ibid. pp. 3, 4.
4 Historic of King James the Sext, pp. 79, 148. 5 Calderwood, ii. 482-483.
FRUITS OF FANATICISM 167
punishing and facility in reconciliation " ; and, this
policy having failed, reoommended them to try another
"kind of medicine."1 In the Parliament of January,
1573, a petition was presented to the Lords of the
Articles, in which the Queen's lords are referred to as
" ordained by God to be punished to death for their
abominable deeds that no tongue can express"2 and
Morton mentioned as one of the reasons, which induced
him to consent to the execution of Kirkcaldy, " what
has been and daily is spoken by the preachers, that
God's plague will not cease until the land be purged of
blood."3 '
When such a spirit as this was at work in the
King's party, it need not surprise us that the war was
very cruelly conducted on one of the two sides, and
eventually, by way of compensation, on both. It was
Lennox who hanged thirty-two of his prisoners at
Brechin and ten more at Paisley; and though Lennox
himself was assassinated after a battle, this was done
against the express command of Kirkcaldy, one of
whose friends lost his life in the attempt to save him.4
All the evidence, indeed, goes to show that, whatever
barbarity was practised on the Queen's side, was
practised mainly, if not entirely, in the spirit of
retaliation. Thus, when five of their soldiers had been
taken and hanged by the enemy, the Queen's lords
sent a drum to Leith, " desiring that fair wars may
1 Calderwood, iii. 116, 117. 2 Bannatyne, p. 305.
3 Tytler, vii., Appendix xii.
4 This was Spens of Wormiston, whose character is thus described in
the Diurnal of Occurrents : " He was in all his life so gentle, so humane,
so kind, so hardy, and so prosperous and happy in all his wars, that
his like eithlie could not heretofore be found" — p. 249. The author
himself was evidently on the King's side (p. 300), and one would have
been glad to know the name at least of one, who in those stormy times
preserved so sober a judgment and so kind a heart.
168 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
be used";1 when Captain Cullen was beheaded on Leith
Links, they threatened to make reprisals ; 2 and on one
occasion, when they hanged two of their prisoners —
a third was spared only at the intercession of Maitland
— they took God to witness that they were compelled
"to do as their enemies does to them." 3
If it is satisfactory, it is also somewhat exasperating,
to know that the fanaticism, which caused so much
misery and bloodshed, was confined to a very small
minority. When Knox refused to comply with those
who reminded him that it was a minister's duty to
pray for all them that are fallen, " the maist part of
the people grudgit;"4 his colleague Craig lamented
that there was no neutral person to make peace
between the two factions,5 and when the Assembly
passed an Act against praying for the Queen, he, to his
great honour, protested against it.6 The peasantry
were as yet almost unaffected by the new religious
fervour ; and even in the towns the " precise Pro-
testants," who took their politics as well as their religion
from Knox, were a far smaller body than is commonly
supposed. They were the majority in Dundee — " the
Geneva of Scotland," as it has been called, and also in
Perth, St. Andrews, and Stirling ; but in Edinburgh
they were undoubtedly weak. From a letter of Drury
to Cecil in January, 1571, we learn that " the greatest
part of the townsmen, especially the craftsmen," were
wholly at Kirkcaldy's devotion.7 When Edinburgh was
besieged by the King's party, about a tenth of the
burgesses, chiefly of the richer class, went over to the
enemy's camp at Leith. It was these men who com-
1 Bannatyne, p. 232. 2 Diurnal, p. 233. 3 Ibid. p. 294.
4 Diurnal, p. 201. 5 Calderwood, iii. 76. 6 Diurnal, p. 236.
7 Foreign Calendar, 1569-1571, No. 1505.
ARCHBISHOP HAMILTON 169
mitted the worst atrocities of the war ; and their
cruelty was inspired mainly by the conduct of their
own fellow citizens. For the people of Edinburgh
displayed the utmost zeal in the Queen's cause. Kirk-
caldy held a " wappinschaw," at which they mustered
in arms 600 strong ; all of them, merchants and
craftsmen alike, were eager at every skirmish to come
to blows with the enemy; and they took such labour
upon them in watch and ward and digging of trenches
" that it was ane marvellous thing to behold." l
Of the many who lost their lives in this miserable
war, there was one at least who requires some special
notice. In April, 1571, the King's party gained their
first great success — and a brilliant exploit it was — the
capture of Dumbarton Castle. Archbishop Hamilton
was among the prisoners ; and within four days he was
tried and executed on a charge of being accessory to
the murder of Darnley and of the Regent Moray. It
was Hamilton's misfortune to accede to the Primacy at
a time when the Roman Church in Scotland was
tottering to its fall, and what creditable exertions he
made to avert the catastrophe we have elsewhere seen.
Though at one time the most formidable opponent of
Mary of Lorraine, he cordially supported her at the
crisis of the Reformation ; and he was the only one
of the prelates who remained with her to the end.2
Once the Church had fallen, however, he proved a better
friend to the house of Hamilton than either to his own
reputation or to the Catholic cause. He supported his
nephew's suit for the hand of Queen Elizabeth ; he
would have had Mary put to death after her surrender
at Carberry Hill ; and he confessed on the scaffold
that he had instigated the assassination of Moray.
1 Diurnal, pp. 231, 232, 252. 2 Foreign Calendar, 1559-1560, No. 738.
170 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
Chatelherault, the Primate's brother, had the rare good
fortune for one in his position at that time in Scotland
to die in his bed ; and his is the only career of note
which is conterminous with the whole cycle of Reforma-
tion history. Proscribed by Beaton as a Protestant
before the accession of Queen Mary, he lived to see both
the end of her reign and the ruin of her cause. x
The capture of Dumbarton, the key to the Firth of
Clyde, was a serious blow to the Queen's party, since it
destroyed their best hope of obtaining succour from
abroad. A few months later, the disaster had almost been
good. On the morning of the fourth of September,
1571, a detachment from Edinburgh Castle succeeded in
surprising the King's lords at Stirling. Lennox,
Morton, and all the other leaders, save Mar, were easily
taken prisoners, and the enterprise was wrecked only by
the conduct of the Borderers, who dispersed at the
critical moment in quest of spoil. Money was sent
occasionally to Maitland and his friends from Flanders,
and especially from France, in payment of the Queen's
dowry, but aid of a more substantial kind was hardly
to be expected. France and Spain suspected each
other's intentions. France was hampered by marriage
negotiations with England ; and though Alva medi-
tated a descent on the Aberdeenshire coast, and even
sent officers to survey the harbours, he was too cautious
to venture much for a waning cause. The Queen's
party owed its preponderance at the outbreak of the
war to a conviction that Mary would eventually be set
free. This conviction was kept alive for a time by
delusive negotiations for her release ; but as these failed
one after another, it gradually declined, until in
October, 1571, after the detection of the Bidolphi con-
1 CMtelherault died in 1575.
MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 171
spiracy, the English Government announced that all
hope of the Queen's return to power must be considered
at an end. In August of this year Argyll went over to
the King's side, and he took with him Cassillis, Lord
Boyd, and the Catholic Earl of Eglinton. Argyll and
Boyd obtained, each of them, " a fat kirk benefice/'
and the Assembly consented to divorce Argyll from his
wife with a view to his marrying Lord Boyd's
daughter.1 For a year longer the struggle continued
without intermission, and the daily skirmishing between
Edinburgh and Leith being rather more than conter-
minous with this period, it wras the bloodiest phase of
the war. On the 31st of July, 1572, a truce was con-
cluded for two months, which was afterwards extended
by successive prolongations to the end of the year. As-
by this truce the Queen's party virtually surrendered
the town, though not the castle, of Edinburgh, and as it
was signed at a time when they had gained some con-
siderable successes in the north, their wisdom in assent-
ing to it is open to question. An event, however ,.
occurred about this time on the continent, the conse-
quences of which were sufficient in themselves to wreck
finally the Queen's cause.
In the last days of August, 1572, the massacre of St.
Bartholomew was raging in all the principal towns of
France, and the news, when it reached Scotland early
next month, created a profound impression. Pro-
testants and Catholics alike were filled with horror ;
there was an immediate outcry for " a straiter league
with England " ; 2 the clergy thundered from the pulpit^
1 Historic of King James the Sext, p. 85. " There was none that was.
brought under the king's obedience but for reward either given or pro-
mised."— Diurnal, p. 238.
2 Foreign Calendar, 1572-1574, No. 578.
172 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
and nine months later, they were as loud in their
denunciations of the crime as though they had heard of
it but the day before.1 Knox, though he had little
more than two months to live, was able to join in the
chorus of execration, and he must have regarded this
appalling tragedy as justifying to the full his own
violent methods. Such, at least, was the judgment of
his followers ; and it is to the excitement of this
great crisis that we may trace, in germ at least, the
Covenant of 1581 and its more famous revival in 1638.
Knox died on the 24th of November, and on the same
day Morton succeeded Mar, who had been Regent since
the death of Lennox in September, 1571. Morton was
the ablest and the strongest man of his party; and
through his influence Elizabeth was induced formally to
recognise the young King, to send money, and to pledge
herself, if necessity arose, to send troops also. This
blow, enforced by the effects of the massacre, completely
broke up the Queen's faction. In February, 1573, at
Perth, the Hamiltons and Huntly made their peace
with the Government, and their example was followed
in April by Lord Seton and the Earl of Athol.
Meanwhile at Edinburgh the truce had run out ; and
before daybreak on the first of January, 1573, a gun
was fired from the Castle in token of defiance. The
Hamiltons and Gordons, however, had already deserted
the cause by obtaining an extension of the truce in
their own favour ; and from this date the Castilians, as
they were called, alone remained in arms for the Queen
of Scots. Maitland had been an inmate of the Castle
since April, 1571. His health, as we have seen, had
long been completely shattered, and he was now so
weak that, when the great guns were fired, he had to
1 Foreign Calendar, 1572-1574, No. 1035.
MAITLAND HOLDS OUT 173
be carried down to the vaults below David's Tower.1
What agony the siege must have been to one in his
condition we may easily imagine ; and his obstinacy in
holding out to the last, so very singular in a cameleon
politique,z is not easily explained. According to Sir
James Melville, Morton, looking to the security of his
own power, wished rather to divide the Queen's adher-
ents than to bring them all to terms ; and when
Kirkcaldy " stood stiff on his honesty and reputation "
not to sacrifice his associates, he turned, with what
success we have just seen, to the Hamiltons and
Huntly.3 At the beginning of March, when they were
called upon to surrender after the general pacification,
the Castilians did, indeed, offer to acknowledge the
King's authority, provided the Castle should remain in
Kirkcaldy's hands and Elizabeth be security that they
should be restored to their possessions, and have money
to pay their debts ; * but they must have known that
these terms had no chance of being accepted, and a few
days before, Maitland and Kirkcaldy, ignorant of what
had been concluded at Perth, had exhorted Huntly to
remain firm, assuring him that France would send help,
and that Elizabeth would not dare to intervene.5 As to
what France would do and Elizabeth would abstain
from doing, Maitland may have had his own opinion,
whatever he might say to encourage Mary's friends.
His was undoubtedly a sanguine spirit ; but, as the
shadows fell more darkly about him in those last years
of sickness and defeat, he saw clearly, though without
flinching, what the end must be.6
1 Foreign Calendar, 1572-1574, No. 763.
2 So M. Philippson styles Maitland. 3 Memoirs, p. 251.
* Foreign Calendar, 1572-1574, No. 816. 5 Ibid. No. 784.
6 As early as August, 1571, he writes thus to Archbishop Beaton,
174 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
Elizabeth soon proved that for once at least she had
been sincere in her promises to Morton. Officers came
from Berwick to survey the Castle, and they were
followed on the first of April by a force of pioneers.
That Maitland and Kirkcaldy, with only 160 men, some
of them not trained soldiers, all of them worn out with
over- work, and badly supplied with water, really meant
to hold the rock against Scots and English combined,
was regarded as well-nigh incredible. Killegrew, Eliza-
beth's ambassador, was " at his wit's end to consider
their case," and could only suppose that their hearts
had been hardened to an ill destiny.1 Maitland was
believed to have "enchanted" Kirkcaldy; but even
Maitland, it was thought, "would not abide" the
cannon, which were on their way to Leith. The
cannon arrived towards the end of April ; and on the
27th, when they were formally summoned for the last
time, the Castilians hoisted the royal standard, and
" returned answer that they would keep the Castle for
Queen Mary, although all Scotland and half England
had sworn the contrary."2
For nearly three weeks the besiegers were occupied in
mounting their guns, the garrison meanwhile doing what
they could to hinder them. On Trinity Sunday, the
17th of May, at two in the afternoon, the English
batteries opened fire, and the firing continued until eight
Mary's ambassador in Paris : " Whatsomever opinion we have had that a
great number of Scotland favoured the Queen and misliked of her
enemies, yet by experience we find but few that take the matter to
heart. Many we found that, in private conference with their friends,
would lament her cause, and by words profess that they wish well to
her majesty and seem to mislike the present Government ; but now
we have put the matter to that point that deed must try who will set
forward her cause and who not, we find very few who put their
hands to the plough." — Quoted by Burton, v. 65-66.
1 Foreign Calendar, 1572-1574, No. 871. -Ibid. Nos. 922, 923.
SURRENDER AND DEATH 175
at night. The attack seems to have languished some-
what till the 21st ; but the cannonade of that morning
was the prelude to a six days' almost continuous bom-
bardment. By the 24th two of the largest towers had
been shattered to pieces ; on the 26th the blockhouse
on the long slope facing the High Street was carried by
assault after three hours' desperate fighting ; and on the
29th, when 3,000 large shot had been thrown into the
Castle, when the battlements had been pounded into " a
sandy brae," when the last spring of water had been cut
off, and the soldiers in desperation were ready to hang
Maitland over the walls, the end came, and Kirkcaldy
surrendered to Sir William Drury, the English com-
mander.1 The heroic garrison, now reduced to 100 men,
were allowed to march out with their arms and baggage ;
the officers retained their swords, and for several days
went at liberty. Morton, however, was determined to
have the chief offenders ; the clergy clamoured daily for
their blood ; and eventually by order of Elizabeth they
were given up. Lord Home's life was spared, but Kirk-
caldy was dragged to the gallows — Drury protesting in
vain, and all the English officers lamenting the loss of
so worthy a captain. A brother of Kirkcaldy perished
with him ; and Maitland, felix in opportunitate mortis,
narrowly escaped the same fate. There can be little
doubt that he "departed at the pleasure of God," as
the chronicler quaintly puts it ; but the reports current
at the time are a sad commentary on the close of a
great career. Sir James Melville notices the rumour
that " he took a drink and died, as the old Romans
1 Birrel in his Diary remarks that " there was a very great slaughter
amongst the English cannoniers, sundries of them having their legs and
arms torn from their bodies in the air by the violence of the great shot."
— Daly ell's Fragments of Scottish History, p. 21.
176 CIVIL WAR, 1568-1573
were wont to do" ; * and Cecil, now Lord Burghley,
writes of him as " dead from his natural sickness, being
also stricken with great melancholy, which he conceived
of the hatred that he did see all his countrymen bear
towards him since he came out of the Castle."2 In
spite of the pathetic entreaties of his wife, his body lay
long unburied ; and when or where his bones were laid
finally to rest, we do not know.
Of the Scottish Reformation in its hour of triumph, a
movement religious indeed, but less religious than
political, Maitland was unquestionably the most repre-
sentative figure ; for, far beyond all his contemporaries,
he embodied its two outstanding motives — the sense of
nationality and the instinct of union. Had Elizabeth
accepted Arran, had Francis II. lived and Mary never
come in person to the Scottish throne, the Reformation,
with Maitland at its head, might have continued to un-
fold itself on such lines as these. This, however, was
not to be. The return of Mary quickened the patriotism
of the Scots ; her return as a Catholic divorced the
political from the religious side of the Reformation ;
and her personal failings gave the preponderance to the
latter. Henceforward Maitland was committed almost
inevitably to the pursuit of the impracticable. In his
succession scheme he sought to reconcile Mary to
Elizabeth and to her own Protestant subjects ; to save
her from Both well, he joined the Confederates at Car-
berry ; to save her from Knox, he consented to her
deposition ; and he perished finally in the attempt to
undo the fetters, with which, in his loyal rebellion, he
himself had bound her. With all his matchless skill in
1 Memoirs, p. 256.
2 Froude, x. 212. Maitland was not "found dead after the surrender,"
as Burton states. He died at Leith on July 9, six weeks later.
A SHATTERED IDEAL
177
diplomacy, Maitland was too much of an idealist to be a
successful statesman ; and his ideal could not come to
fruition at a time when the cold shadow of Puritanism
was already creeping over the land. In him and in
Kirkcaldy of Grange the long struggle for national
independence claimed the last of its victims. The
embodiment of a period of transition, looking with the
same passionate insight both before and after, he made
it his aim to carry Scotland, with all its traditions unim-
paired, into the bosom of the larger life ; and wide as
the channel of union was, wide as the Scots themselves
had made it, it was not wide enough for him.
CHAPTER VI.
THE NEW RELIGION.
WE have seen that it would be a great mistake to regard
the Scottish Reformation as merely the birth and de-
velopment of the Reformed Church. Between the Refor-
mation— aristocratic, cynical, statesmanlike, patriotic—
and its protege the Church there was a very real
conflict ; and it was not till the Church had emerged
victorious from the vortex of Reformation politics that
she could hope to be the mistress of her own career.
With the death of Maitland in 1573, religion obtained
a supremacy in the public life of Scotland, which was
not overthrown for more than a hundred years. Mait-
land had looked primarily to a union of the crowns ;
but the spirit in which he worked — the spirit of
nationality attuned to large and imperial ends — was the
spirit, not of 1603, but of 1707. At this point, then,
we enter on a new period. We have traced the ante-
cedents of the Reformation and its progress to victory
against France and Rome ; we have studied in Knox the
conflict of the religious with the political element, in
Maitland the development of the latter ; and it falls now
to attempt some analysis of Scottish Protestantism as a
preface to what must henceforth in the main be ecclesias-
tical history.
ERASMUS AND LUTHER 179
It is now generally admitted that the religious
revolution of the sixteenth century was primarily a moral,
not an intellectual, movement. It was not so much the
outcome of the New Learning as a reaction against the
premature liberalism, which in Italy had paganised the
Church, and in every country had aggravated the
corruption of manners by discrediting, without replacing,
the ancient faith. Thus in one sense the Reformation was
a confession of failure, since it cast a blight of futility
on that revival of humanism natural to men whose eyes
had been opened to the greatness of a vanished world.
How entirely opposed was the religious movement to its
literary antecedents may be inferred from the fact that
Luther made the original depravity of human nature the
corner-stone of his theological system. To some minds
with strong Hellenic sympathies, the Reformation has
appeared merely as a sullen and angry sea rolling
between us and the sunlit shores of the Renaissance ;
and assuredly it was the misfortune of Europe that it
was too far gone in moral deterioration to be regenerated
by Erasmus instead of Luther. Goethe said of Luther
that he " threw back the intellectual progress of man-
kind for centuries by calling in the passions of the
multitude to decide questions which ought to have been
left to the learned." Under the influence of religious
fervour thought warmed into conviction, and conviction,
when the heat had gone out of it, crystallised into
•dogma. The monks were not wrong when they said
that Erasmus laid the egg and Luther hatched it, nor
was Erasmus wrong when he said that he had laid a
hen's egg, whereas the result of Luther's incubation was
not a hen but a gamecock ; for the participation of the
masses was really all that was needed to convert
Erasmian ideas into Lutheran convictions.
180 THE NEW RELIGION
At the same time it is easy to see how the Reforma-
tion developed that liberalising tendency which has
made it one of the greatest epochs in the progress of the
human mind. The Roman Catholic, linked as he was to
an infallible Church, believed not merely in an absolute
standard of truth, but in the accuracy of a long series
of decisions based thereon, which were as much the
creation of the ecclesiastical authorities as the common
law of England is the creation of English judges. The
Protestant accepted indeed the absolute standard, but
he interpreted it either independently or in the light of
precedents, which, for him, were instructive merely, not
authoritative. Thus the weight of tradition was rolled
back to a point, at which it limited without repressing*
freedom of thought ; and the liberty of interpretation
which the Reformers permitted to themselves, if not to
their successors, went far to compensate for their sub-
servience to the written Word. The difference between
the Church conceived as the depositary of divine truth
and the Church conceived as divine only in so far as it
approximates to that truth, is the secret of the intellec-
tual superiority of Protestantism ; for the latter
conception, on the face of it wavering and elastic,
prepared the way for that progressive multiplication of
sects, which, however prejudicial in the long run to true
culture, is none the less evidence of continuous mental
vitality.
So far, then, the Reformation involved a recognition,
of the right of private judgment. But it is remarkable
that this right was asserted by the Reformers, not as
essential to the Christian life, but as an extraordinary
expedient designed to meet a special emergency. As
the founders of a new religious system, they claimed
to examine for themselves the inspired writings ; but
THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT 181
the system, which embodied the results of their in-
vestigation, was to be accepted henceforward without
question. With the exception of Zwingli and Socinus,
all the leaders of the movement repudiated the idea
of religious toleration. When Calvin in 1553 had
Servetus burnt for heresy, even the mild Melancthon
wrote to congratulate him, and Beza published a
treatise in justification of the crime.1 The Book of
Discipline requires that all doctrine repugnant to the
Evangel "be utterly suppressed as damnable to man's
salvation." The authors of the Scottish Confession
declared in their preface that, if any man could point
to anything in their work which he believed to be
contrary to Scripture, they would either convince him
of his error or defer to his objection ; but this preface
was omitted when the Confession was re-enacted by
Parliament in 1567, and the Act of that year declares
that those who in all time coming shall believe the
Confession, and those only, are the true and holy Church
of Christ Jesus.2 Thus Knox and his colleagues
promulgated as absolutely authoritative, and under
heavy penalties, a document in which they themselves
had admitted the possibility of error.
It thus appears that the Reformation was favourable
to intellectual progress in so far as it involved the
acceptance of a principle, which, however the Reformers
might seek to limit its application, was really the
negation of finality in matters of faith. In other
respects, too, the movement stimulated inquiry ; for
it impaired the poetry of religion, the subtle charm
which disarms criticism, by popularising those theo-
logical conceptions which had hitherto been familiar
1 Lecky's Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, ii. 50.
2 Innes's Law of Creeds in Scotland, pp. 25-27.
182 THE NEW RELIGION
only to scholars. The Catholic Church, which for
centuries had been the mind of Christendom, abounded
in vague and often contradictory ideas, originally no
doubt the work of theologians, but known to the
people only through the literature of devotion as
interpretations of the lights and shadows of the
religious life. Thus, for example, the dogma of
original sin might almost be said to be true as a
recognition of the tragedy of fate when it was held
loosely and in conjunction with other beliefs expressive
of human dignity and hopefulness, whereas it became
profoundly false, when it was adopted as a creed to the
exclusion of every opposing doctrine. The Reformers,
in fact, made the people potential sceptics in making
them theologians ; for the finer touches of the religious
spirit could not be reproduced in the language of the
schools.
The contradiction we have observed in the theory of
the Reformation is only one of many ; for the strength
of the movement lay not in its ideas, but in the
sincerity of purpose, which would have made even worse
logic a success in practice.1 Themselves the offspring
of moral indignation, the Reformers affected to despise
good works ; and the twofold aspect of their teaching,
as an exaltation of dogma over conduct, and at the same
time an incentive to free thought, has made the
evolution of Protestantism much more difficult and
painful than it might otherwise have been. Even the
rehabilitation of the Bible gave at first little promise
of its efficacy as a means of mental enfranchisement.
1 " Whatever direct superiority. . . Protestantism had over Catholicism
was a moral superiority arising out of its greater sincerity and earnestness.
. . . Its pretensions to an intellectual superiority are in general quite
illusory." — Matthew Arnold : Culture and Anarchy.
THE APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 183
Knox on more than one occasion declared that the new
religion was independent of argument, being based on
Scripture, whereas the old faith required to "be laid to
the square rule of God's Word." 1 He thus laid himself
open to the attack of Ninian Winzet, whose arguments
against the all-sufficiency of the Scriptures were never
answered, probably because from the Protestant point of
view, as then understood, they were really unanswerable.
The Reformers claimed to have attained to finality in
matters of faith ; and Winzet showed them in language
which recalls two familiar lines of Shakespeare,2 that
their absolute standard of truth was as variable and
as diverse as human nature itself. The day was then
far distant — if indeed it has yet dawned — when
Protestantism could cite the author of the four Score
Three Questions as a witness in its favour ; but in that
uncritical age the habit of bringing all disputes in
doctrine to the touchstone of Scripture was rather a
help than a hindrance to freedom of thought. In
Scotland the sermon grew to such proportions that it
gave a name to the entire service ; for more than a
century the land resounded with the din of theological
discussion ; and though in itself the controversy tended
to no important result, the mental activity it involved
was a training of very considerable value.
But whatever intellectual gain, immediate or remote,
may have been involved in the appeal to Scripture,
it would seem to have had at least two very unfor-
tunate results. In the first place, through the literal
interpretation of the inspired text, it generated that
1 Works, ii. 139.
" In religion
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bles3 it and approve it with a text."
184 THE NEW RELIGION
hard and inflexible temper which we have had occasion
to study in the case of Knox. On mere academic
grounds the Roman Church was right in the stress
it laid on tradition ; for this principle, in collating early
teaching with early practice, was a concession to the
true spirit of history. At the lowest, tradition is
always practicable, whereas new opinions, based on Scrip-
ture apart from its commentary in the hearts and lives
of past generations, are apt to be very much the
reverse. In some respects the Reformation had the
same effect on Scotland as the Revolution on France ;
for it brought into power a class of men who had
had no training in politics, and whose arbitrary use
of the Bible was no more beneficial in practice than
the enthusiasm of French politicians for abstract ideas.
Whatever may have been the relative merits of the
law of Moses and the philosophy of Rousseau, the
supporters of both systems were equally inflexible in
their efforts to translate theory into the language of
fact.
How deplorable was the influence of the Church
during the war between King James and his mother we
have already seen ; and in the social as in the political
sphere the intractability of the Reformers was rendered
worse then inconvenient through their devotion to the
history of the Jews. Their theology was sufficiently
evangelical ; but in their records of moral discipline we
are reminded of what Macaulay says of a Scottish
statesman of the Revolution, that though he was con-
tinually quoting Scripture, there is nothing in all his
writings to show that he had ever heard of the New
Testament. Of work done in this spirit we have a
good example in the case of Aberdeen. The kirk-
session of Aberdeen came into existence in November,
MORAL DISCIPLINE 185
1562; and on the 10th of December they issued what
professed to be an expansion of the Decalogue as a
complete code of morals for the town. Having deplored
their legal incompetence to punish fornication, or even
adultery, with death, they took measures against "such
rotten members " as might be found guilty of these
O <~J v
sins. Fornicators for the first offence were to make
public repentance ; for the second, to be carted and
ducked ; and for the third, to be banished. Harlots,
"adulterers manifest and openly known," bards, com-
mon scolds, slanderers and backbiters for the third
offence, were all to be banished ; and drunkards for the
third offence were to be excommunicated. Those who
absented themselves from church on Sundays were to
pay sixpence to the poor ; and the elders and deacons,
under a penalty of two shillings, were to attend both
the Sunday and the weekday preachings. There was
to be no discussion of the Scriptures, " no fly ting or
chiding " at time of meat ; and the heads of households
were to make provision against swearing — those who
could afford it to pay a fine, and servants and children
to receive " ane palm on the hand." This comprehen-
sive decree was enforced and supplemented by many
subsequent ordinances. In March, 1568, the elders and
deacons took a solemn oath to keep secret the proceed-
ings of the session ; and at the same meeting the order
of public repentance for adultery was thus determined :
The adulterer was to present himself on three several
Sundays at the church door clad in sackcloth, bare-
footed, barelegged, with his offence inscribed round a
crown of paper on his head ; he was to stand before
the pulpit during the sermon, and at its close was to
resume his place at the door, as a spectacle to the con-
gregation as it dispersed. In 1603 it was ordained that
186 THE NEW RELIGION
a bailie and two of the session should pass through
the town every Sunday, either before or after noon,
and should search houses at their discretion, with
a view to reporting all who were absent from
church.1
What was done at Aberdeen was done with more or
less severity in every Lowland parish. The kirk -session
of Perth would not allow an unmarried woman to live
alone or two sisters to keep house together for fear of
scandal ; and it ordained that female delinquents of
the usual type should be first imprisoned, and then
exposed at the market cross " fast locked in the irons
two hours, their curchies off their heads and faces bare,
without plaid or other covering. " 2 The ecclesiastical
court known as the General Kirk of Edinburgh seems
to have allowed itself a very wide latitude in the
exercise of discipline. We read of persons making
public repentance for exporting wheat or for lending
money at interest ; and for at least three years after
Kirkcaldy had withdrawn from the town to the Castle
in July, 1572, the Queen's citizens were being perse-
cuted by the Church. Thomas Macalyne, a Lord of
Session, complained that, though he had remained in
the town with Kirkcaldy " of ane most just fear," and
though on this ground the Assembly had decided in his
favour, he was still excluded from the communion.
Even the women who had been in the Castle were
forced to make repentance ; and so late as July, 1575,
we find a certain David Gregor doing penance, bare-
1 Ecclesiastical Records of Aberdeen (Spalding Club). In the year
1792 fines were still levied on immorality in a parish at the gates of
Aberdeen. — Statuta Ecclesiae Scoticanae, ii. 286. In the parish of Mauch-
line, Ayrshire, public penance was not abolished till 1809. — Edgar's Old
Church Life in Scotland, i. 301.
2 Perth Kirk-Session Register, Spottiswoode Miscellany, vol. ii.
DISCIPLINARY LEGISLATION 1ST
headed in a grey gown, for having borne arms in the
Queen's cause.1
Whatever power the Church may have had to secure
respect for its own decrees was largely reinforced by
the authority of the State. Many Acts of Parliament
were passed in aid of ecclesiastical discipline, as ex-
amples of which may be mentioned a very severe law
of 1567 against fornication, an Act of 1579 for the
observance of Sunday, and an Act of 1581, which
provided that swearers for the third offence should be
banished or imprisoned for a year and a day at the
king's pleasure, and that censors should be appointed in
the market places of all boroughs to apprehend the
users of "abominable oaths."2 These and similar laws
were sometimes extended by the Church courts in a
very arbitrary fashion ;3 and the magistrate who hesitated
to enforce them was liable to be proceeded against by
the Church. But the most effective way in which the
State assisted the spiritual power was by attaching civil
penalties to the sentence of excommunication. In this
respect the Reformed Church merely served itself heir
to the legal endowment of its Catholic predecessor. In
1572 excommunicated persons were declared to be
infamous, incapable of holding office or of bearing
witness ; and by an Act of the same year, based on one
of James V., it was provided that all who had been
excommunicated for forty days should be charged under
1 " Buik of the General Kirk of Edinburgh," Maitland Miscellany, voL
ii. ; Historic of James the Sext, p. 148.
2 Act. Parl. iii. 25, 138, 212.
3 Thus the Kirk-Session of Perth, having resolved to compel attendance
at the Thursday sermon, required the Dean of Guild and Deacons " to
appoint the penalty expressed in the Act of Parliament for breaking of
the Sabbath day to be taken up of the contraveners of this ordinance." —
Spottiswoode Miscellany, ii. 257.
188 THE NEW RELIGION
letters of Council to reconcile themselves to the Church,
which if they failed to do, they were to be outlawed as
rebels.1
To reconcile the rigour and activity of this censorship
of morals with its small apparent result is perhaps the
most perplexing problem of the Scottish Reformation.
With all its great qualities, Scotland has never stood
high either in chastity or in sobriety among the nations
of Europe ; and the ecclesiastical records bewail at all
times the abounding iniquity of the people. Un-
questionably to a great extent and over a long period
the censorship was practically inoperative. Complaint
was made to the Assembly in 1573 that "the nobility
will not receive discipline, men of poor estate for the
most part contemn it";2 and the secular power was
always slow to exert itself in support of the Church.
Nearly forty years after the Reformation, in 400
parishes, exclusive of Argyle and the Isles, there was
neither minister nor reader ; in a far greater number
there can have been no minister ; and where there was
no minister the kirk-session was not likely to have
much vitality.3 In the course of the next century,
1 Act. Parl. iii. 76.* As early as 1242 we find Alexander II. by a mandate
to his sheriff and bailies of Traquair directing that persons excom-
municated for forty days should be imprisoned till they made satisfaction
to the Church. — Statuta Ecclesiae Scoticanae.
2 Booke of the Universal Kirk, i. 284.
3 Eow, p. 174 ; Birrel's Diary, date 1596. So late as this year the
Assembly ordained " that every minister be charged to have a session
established of the meetest men of his congregation." — Calderwood, v. 403.
In 1572 the staff of the Church consisted of 252 Ministers, 157 Exhorters,
and 508 Readers ; and in that year there was only one minister iu the
whole county of Peebles. — Keith, iii. 56, note. From a table printed in
Mackenzie's History of OaUoway for the period 1567-1573 there would
seem to have been only four ministers in the whole of Wigtown and
Kirkcudbright, and of these two were replaced by readers. In 1588
there were " scarce three if ministers in Stirlingshire, and out of 24
DISCIPLINE A FAILURE
however, the influence of the clergy immensely in-
creased ; and their failure to raise the moral tone of the
people cannot be ascribed in the long run to want of
power. Much stress has been laid on the tendency of
the Calvinistic theology to subordinate strictness of life
to soundness of doctrine ; l but though the system of
discipline may have been weakened through the
enforcing of good works in the session and their dis-
paragement in the pulpit, the system itself was
incurably bad. It wras a system without tenderness-
and without pity, suited only to enthusiasts, repellant
to strong natures, and to weak natures positively
pernicious. The humiliation inflicted on female trans-
gressors was the death of all modesty ; it became the
most fruitful cause of infanticide ; and on this and other
grounds it was condemned by the Duke of York, after-
wards James VII. , as a practice that "rather made
scandals than buried them."2 Nor should we fail to
note that a certain unnatural vice made its appearance in
Scotland soon after the Eeformation, which is said to
have been quite unknown there before. In 1570 two
men were burnt at Edinburgh for this offence ; 3 and the
vice grew to alarming proportions in the noontide of
Puritanism about the middle of the next century.
Apart from its severity, the censorship was the
winnowing of a sect, not the moulding of a nation.
It is obvious, indeed, that a Church, in which a minute
code of morals was not merely inculcated as an ideal but
parishes in Dumbarton not four had ministers. In 1596 the majority of
the parish churches — that is, the 400 without minister or reader — are
described as " altogether destituted of all exercise of religion." — Calder-
wood, iv. 663, 664 ; v. 421.
1 Lecky's nationalism, i. 431.
2 Chambers' Domestic Annals, ii. 414.
3 Diurnal of Occitrrents, pp. 185-186 ; James the Sext, p. 64.
190 THE NEW RELIGION
enforced as a system of police,1 could not in any real
sense be the Church of the majority ; and no further
explanation is needed of the phenomenon so invariable
in Scottish ecclesiastical annals — a small company of
"choice professors" testifying in vain against the sins of
a back- sliding people.
The Church did not become less stern or less in-
tolerant with its progress in years, but the contrast so
often drawn in this respect between the Reformers and
their immediate successors is more apparent than real.
The Reformers were the offspring of moral confusion and
anarchy ; and their rigour is rather disguised than
relaxed by a certain freedom of tone, which finds ex-
pression in the " godlie ballates " and in the poems of
Sir David Lindsay. Knox, with all his austerity, had
the saving gift of humour ; but, though he could laugh
heartily at the vices of the old priesthood, he treated the
shortcomings of his contemporaries in anything but a
mirthful spirit. He speaks contemptuously of the law
which prescribed death only in the last resort as the
punishment of adultery. He declaimed from the pulpit
against " excess, riotous cheer, banqueting, immoderate
dancing," and he rebukes even the pious Moray for the
extravagance of the banquet at his marriage.2 The
truth is, that Knox was as much of a Puritan as his own
greatness and the greatness of his age permitted him to
1 Thomas Malcolm put in the Tolbooth for two hours and to pay a fine
for having called Thomas Brown a "loon carle." — Perth Kirk-Session
Register, p. 236. For cursing the Turks because they had not detained
John Campbell a prisoner, John Beittoune to stand one Sabbath bare-
legged and barefooted in a hair gown at the kirk-door, and then in the
place of repentance. — Irving's History of Dumbartonshire, p. 569. William
Atken to stand two days in sackcloth in the place of public repentance
for disguising himself on the last day of the year. — Cameron Lees' Abbey
of Paisley, p. 258.
2 Knox, Works, ii. 314, 362, 383.
PURITANISM 191
be ; and Puritanism gained rapidly in power with the
subsidence of the national spirit and the shrinking up of
the Church into a separate community. In 1574 we
find the General Kirk of Edinburgh restraining festivity
at weddings, especially the " pompous convoy of bride
and bridegroom " ; l and it became usual to exact a
money security that no more than a certain sum should
be spent on each marriage. Slowly, and with great
difficulty, the old festivals were blotted out of the
calendar. The May Games, which even before the
Reformation had been prohibited as a source of dis-
order, were rigorously suppressed ; and the Queen's
citizens must have greatly scandalised their precise
brethren by reviving in their absence the old sports of
Eobin Hood and Little John.2 In the year 1574 at
Edinburgh there were no fewer than three fasts, each of
eight days, during which the diet of the people was
supposed to be only " bread and drink with all kind of
sobriety";3 and it is characteristic of Scottish Puritanism
that the thanksgiving for the defeat of the Spanish
Armada took the form of " an universal fast." *
In one respect, and in one respect only, the practice
of the Reformers was distinctly less rigorous than that
which prevails, after the lapse of three centuries, in our
own day. The grim Sabbatarianism, as anti-Jewish in
spirit as it is directly unchristian, which long outlived
the discipline of Geneva and promises in a modified
form to survive even its theology, was unknown in
Scotland during the lifetime of Knox. All the leading
Reformers — Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Zwingli, Beza
— denied the permanent obligation of the fourth com-
mandment ; and the Scottish Confession does not refer
1 Maitland Miscellany, i. 104, 116. 2 Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 263.
3 Maitland Miscellany, i. 97, 105, 111. 4 Calderwood, iv. 696.
192 THE NEW RELIGION
at all to this precept in its summary of the law of
works. Before the Reformation a Sunday market was
the custom in most of the Scottish burghs ; the day was
appointed for the practice of archery by an Act of 1457 ;
and in the sixteenth century, if not considerably earlier,
its religious character was almost obliterated through
the general contempt for the services of the Church.
Hamilton's Catechism in 1552 declared that the want
of respect for Sunday was a fruitful source of evil ; l
and the Reformers, looking to the observance of the day
and not to its sanctification, were content to enforce
attendance at church, and more implicitly than ex-
pressly, a cessation of work during the hours of service.
Knox on Sunday evening visited Calvin during a game
of bowls, and with several other guests enjoyed the
hospitality of Randolph ;2 and it is somewhat remarkable
that Sunday suppers were common amongst the clergy
even during the Sabbatarian frenzy of 1649.3 The
Comedy of the Prodigal Son was performed on Sunday
at St. Andrews as late as August, 1574.4 It was not
till 1569 that the Council of the Canongate ordered the
taverns to be closed, and not till 1598 that the Council
of Aberdeen prohibited the holding of a market " in
time of sermon." 6
But Knox's refusal to sacrifice the Sunday to the
Sabbath was so little in keeping with his general
attitude towards the Old Testament that it need not
1 Law's edition, p. xv.
2 Dean Stanley's Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland, p. 99.
3 Chambers' Annals, ii. 182.
4 The Assembly, however, took note of this incident, and in the follow-
ing March it prohibited the acting of scriptural plays, and directed that
no play of any kind should be performed on Sunday. — St. Andrews Kirk-
Session Record (Scot. Hist. Soc.), i. xlvi. 396-397, note.
6 Chambers' Annals, i. 58, 329.
SABBATARIANISM 193
surprise us to find some of his followers — for example,
the kirk session of Aberdeen in 1562 — identifying the
two days at the expense of the former ; and once the
Sunday had been brought within the scope of the fourth
commandment, the spirit of Puritanism might be
trusted to translate the Jewish festival into the
Christian day of gloom. The Act of 1579, which pro-
hibited working on Sunday under a penalty of 10
shillings, and " gaming and passing to taverns " under a
penalty of 20,1 was the first of a series of Sabbatarian
statutes. The new principle, however, gained ground
slowly, owing as much to the laxity of the Church as to
the habits of the people. It was not till 1586, and then
only in the morning, that marriages were forbidden on
Sunday by the kirk-session of Perth ; 2 and " play
Sundays " were not abolished by the Presbytery of
Aberdeen until 1599.3 A certain David Wemys, when
incarcerated in that year by the kirk-session of St.
Andrews for dancing on Trinity Sunday, said " he never
saw that dancing was stayed before ;"4 and in the same
year at Perth four men were admonished for playing
golf on Sunday — the offence being that they had played
" in time of preaching." 5 The Sunday market at Dal-
keith was not abolished by Parliament till 1581, at
Crail, till 1587, in inland towns generally, till 1592;6
and the growth of Sabbatarianism seems to have pro-
ceeded at a very unequal pace in different parts of the
realm. Thus, in 1592, when the ministers of Edinburgh
were vainly trying to stop the Monday market on the
1 Act, Parl. iii. 138.
2 Spottiswoode Miscellany, ii. 253. The Book of Discipline required
marriages to be solemnised on Sunday forenoon.
3 Eccles. Records of Aberdeen, p. 169.
4 St. Andrews Kirk-Session Record, ii. 893.
5 Spottiswoode Miscellany, ii. 281. • Act. Parl. iii. 238, 507, 548.
N
194 THE NEW RELIGION
ground that people living at a distance addressed them-
selves to the journey on the previous evening,1 markets
were still held on Sunday at Forfar, Aberdeen, and in
many country towns. At Aberdeen the Sunday market
was not finally abolished till 1603, and even then the
sale of vegetables was permitted after four in the after-
noon.2
Amongst the consequences of the Reformation in
Scotland it is necessary to include one, the blackest
and the most pernicious, which on the continent is not
specially associated with the Protestant movement.
The belief in witchcraft and in the duty of suppressing
it, though of very ancient origin and long prominent in
the proceedings of the Inquisition, was first sedulously
propagated by the Church towards the end of the
fifteenth century ; and Innocent VIII. , whose bull
Summis Desiderantes was issued in 1484, launched a
crusade against the powers of darkness, which was
stimulated by his successors and the unmitigated
horrors of which no words can describe. In some places
the executions for sorcery were so numerous as seriously
to reduce the population. In Geneva 500 persons were
burned in three months ; in the bishopric of Wartzburg
800, in the Italian province of Como 1,000, within a
single year; and at Toulouse, the seat of the Inquisition,
400 witches were burned at a single execution.3 The
Reformation, which broke out when the witch mania
was at its height, did nothing to allay the flame. Both
Luther and Calvin supported the delusion ; and it was
under Protestant auspices that witchcraft, apart froi
its consequences to life and well-being, was first made
capital offence both in Scotland and in England. Scot-
1 Historic of King James the Sext, p. 255.
2 Eccles. Records of Aberdeen, p. 28. 3 Lecky's Rationalism, i. 4-5.
WITCHCRAFT 195
land no doubt owed its comparative immunity from the
superstition to the religious torpor, which so long
preceded the Reformation. The Act against " witch-
craft, sorcery and necromancy " was passed in June,
1563 ; and two witches were burnt a few weeks later.1
Moray in his progress to the north in 1569 burned
certain witches at St. Andrews; and he burned "another
company of witches " at Dundee on his way back.2 A
witch was burned at St. Andrews during Knox's resid-
ence there in 1572; but the executions do not appear to
have been numerous during the next eighteen years.
In the autumn of 1590 some 200 witches and sorcerers
were found to have conspired with the Devil, whom
they met at midnight in the church of North Berwick,3
to wreck the King and his young bride on their voyage
from Denmark. Thirty persons were executed at this
time in Edinburgh; in 1597 twenty -four at Aberdeen
alone, and many in other parts of the country.4 The
human agony indicated by these figures lies, not in the
death of the victims — for in most cases, though not in
all, they were strangled before being committed to the
flames — but in the hideous tortures applied to establish
their guilt. Women were stripped naked and pricked
all over with long pins in order to discover the point of
insensibility which was supposed to be the Devil's mark;
1 Knox, Works, ii. 391.
2 Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 145 ; King James the Seat, p. 40. In spite
of this admission, we are told on p. 242 of the latter chronicle, that the
law against witchcraft was not enforced till 1590.
3 Sir James Melville refers to " their meeting by night in the kirk of
Northberwick, where the devil, clad in a black gown, with a black hat
upon his head, preached unto a great number of them out of the pulpit."
— Memoirs, p. 395. Calderwood (v. 116) gives the text of the Devil's
sermon : " Many go to the market, but all buy not."
4 " Ane great number of witches brint through all the parts of this
realm in June 1597 years." — Chronicle of Perth (Maitland Club), p. 6.
196 THE NEW RELIGION
they were kept in torment for many days, studiously
debarred from sleep, and their mouths lacerated with
the four prongs of an iron hoop, known as a witch's
bridle, which bound them upright to a staple in the
wall.1 Men and women alike had their legs crushed
with wedges in the " boot," their heads " thrawn " with
a rope, their fingers twisted in the thumbscrews, even
their nails torn off with pincers. Some experience of
such torture induced Doctor Fian, " Registrar to the
Devil, that sundry times preached at North Berwick
Kirk," to make a confession, which, when released from
pain, he immediately recalled, and which no subsequent
ingenuity of his tormentors, diabolical as it was, could
bring him to re-affirm. In 1594 a woman named Alison
Balfour was executed at Kirk wall, who had borne her
own agony without flinching, and had been induced to
confess through seeing her husband, her son, and her
daughter successively tortured before her. The daughter
was a child of seven, and the mother at the stake asked
pardon of God for a false confession.2 Thomas Palpla,
another of the Kirkwall victims, is said to have been
tortured in the boots twice a day for fourteen days, and
in the interval to have been scourged till he had
" neither flesh nor hide." These atrocities, approved
and even superintended by the clergy as a legitimate
anticipation of the pains of hell, were only one result of
a superstition, which continued to be a source of misery
and of degradation long after the belief in magic had
passed away.
1 See Pitcairn's Criminal Trials (Banuatyne edition), ii. 50, where the
instrument is minutely described.
8 Pitcairn, ii. 373-377. The dying declaration of this poor woman, who
had been kept in " vehement torture " for 48 hours, has a pathos which
no words can express. Two ministers and a reader were present at her
execution.
WITCHCRAFT 197
If we knew no more of witchcraft than is revealed in
the extorted confessions, it might have been supposed
that the only witches were those who, in the agony of
torture, were content to proclaim themselves such.
With all its extravagance, however, the delusion had a
substratum of fact. Some of its victims were mere
lunatics, who, in the simplicity of madness, were as
ready to describe their hallucinations as the judges to
believe them.1 Not a few technically were witches in
the sense that they either acted as such in good faith or
sought thus to impose on the credulity of others ; and
it is very remarkable that the convictions recorded are
as often for the abusing of the people by pretensions to
witchcraft as for witchcraft itself.2
When the evil first became serious does not appear.
The Book of Discipline makes no mention of witchcraft
in its allusion to crimes worthy of death ; and Knox,
though he implies that the Act of 1563 was one of
several Acts designed to propitiate the Church, does not
allude to it when he mentions the others.3 There can,
however, be -little doubt that witchcraft, in all its
varieties of insanity, illusion, and imposture, proceeded
from the influence of the new theology on an ignorant
and hitherto irreligious people, upsetting the reason of
some, warping that of others, and disposing all to credit
the potency of Satan in the infliction, the averting, and
the cure of evil. Expanding with the boundaries of the
Church, it spread as the under- current of Puritanism to
its flood-mark in the next century ; and the clergy, when
1See the famous case of Bessie Dunlop in Pitcairn, ii. 49-58, and
Chambers' Annals, i. 108-111.
2 Pitcairn, ii. 50. For illustrations, see the records of the Aberdeen
Trials in the Spalding Miscellany, vol. i.
3 Knox, Works, ii. 383.
198 THE NEW RELIGION
confronted with the results of their own teaching, only
gave strength and publicity to the illusion by their
efforts to suppress it. An Act of Assembly in 1573
enjoined all bishops, superintendents, and commissioners
for the planting of kirks to summon such persons as
might be suspected of taking counsel with witches, and
to cause them to make public repentance in sackcloth.1
All preliminary proceedings in cases of witchcraft were
conducted by the clergy.2 The kirk-sessions were
required to submit the names of all reputed witches,
together with the evidence against them, to the various
commissions of assize ; and where persons had been
implicated through the confessions of others, an inquest
was ordered in their respective parishes as to the truth
of the charge.3 Accusers were usually cited to appear
in person before the session ; but a box is said in some
cases to have been placed at the church door for the
purpose of receiving anonymous accusations ; 4 and the
Presbytery of Aberdeen in 1603 ordered each minister,
with two of his elders, to take the oaths of the inhabi-
tants within his charge as to what they knew of witches
and consulters therewith.5
In 1597 the tragedy of the witch prosecutions was
intensified by a new and horrible device. In that year
a certain Margaret Atkin was granted her life on a
promise to make a general discovery of witches, whom
she professed to know by a secret mark in their eyes.
How many lives were sacrificed to this delusion we are
1 Calderwood, iii. 299.
2 Thus, Sir James Melville says of the North Berwick witches, " James
Carmichell, minister of Haddington, has their history and whole deposi-
tions."— Memoirs, p. 396.
3 Spalding Miscellany, i. 185-187.
4 Dalyell's Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 624.
6 Eccles. Records of Aberdeen, p. 191.
WITCHCRAFT 199
not told ; but for several months Atkin was employed
in detecting witches, and at Glasgow " divers innocent
women, through the credulity of the minister, Mr. John
Cowper, were condemned and put to death."1 Even-
tually the fraud was exposed, and its author died a
confessed impostor. It is said to have been in conse-
quence of this miscarriage of justice that the Privy
Council in August revoked all commissions of witchcraft
granted to particular persons or to any number of per-
sons severally as well as conjunctly, and provided that in
future such commissions should be granted only to "three
or four conjunctly at the fewest." 2 The employment of
witches as King's evidence did not commend itself to
the clergy at large ; 3 and it is almost incredible, after
what had occurred, that some of them should have
revived the practice, a few years later, in a still more
monstrous form. Nevertheless, in 1607 we find the
Privy Council refusing an application for a commission
of witchcraft on account of " the exceeding great slander "
that had arisen through ministers bringing professed
sorcerers with them into church and consulting them
with regard to the honesty of their parishioners, whereby
1 Spottiswoode, iii. 66-67. The Presbytery of Glasgow threatened with
the stocks those who traduced the ministry of the town as the authors of
the late executions. — Maitland Miscellany, i. 89.
2 Privy Council Register, v. 409-410.
3 The Presbytery of St. Andrews agreed on " a supplication to be made
to his Majesty for repressing of the horrible abuse by carrying a witch
about," and resolved " to request the magistrates of St. Andrews to stay
the same there." — St. Andrews Kirk-Session Record, ii. 801, note. This
was on September 1, and may have been prompted by the Act of Council,
August 12, which showed that the civil power had taken alarm. Next
year, 1598, the Assembly resolved " to advise with his Majesty, if the
carrying of professed witches from town to town to try witchcraft in
others be lawful and ordinary trial of witchcraft or not." — Calderwood,
v. 685.
200 THE NEW RELIGION
they had caused the death of men and women hitherto
undefamed.1 "
From this, the darkest page in the history of the
Scottish Reformation, it is a relief to turn to others of a
brighter and more hopeful character. Whatever may
have been the tendency of the new discipline, it was a
form of pressure to which certain classes of the com-
munity proved much more amenable than others. It
has been said that "the Protestantism of Scotland was
the creation of the commons, as in turn the commons
may be said to have been created by Protestantism " ; 2
and though neither of these statements can be accepted
without qualification, they both contain a large element
of truth. In its origin the Reformation in Scotland
was undoubtedly an aristocratic movement, for it was
established as the result of a political revolution, of
which the nobles were the natural leaders, and in
concurrence with certain social tendencies which affected
the aristocracy more than any other class. We have
seen, however, that there was always a considerable
section, the nucleus of a great ecclesiastical party,
strong in the burghs and amongst the smaller land-
owners, to which the religious side of the movement was
really of the first importance. With some reservation
in favour of Leith, where the people as early as 1543
were " noted all to be good Christians," 3 Dundee
must be regarded as the original home of Protestantism
in Scotland. It had eagerly welcomed the preaching
of Wishart ; it produced the " gude and godlie ballates,"
sometimes called the " psalms of Dundee " ; the desire
of its citizens to obtain translations of the Bible
1 Daly ell's Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 661.
2 Froude's Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Character.
3 Sadler State Papers, i. 242.
SOCIAL CHANGES 201
was remarked by the English during the invasion of
1547 ; and in 1558 they are described as excelling
all the rest of the Reformers in zeal and boldness.1
The fervour of Dundee, reflected more or less in all
the eastern seaports, found many converts amongst the
gentry of Forfar, Kincardine, Fife, and Lothian ; and
the zeal of the barons or lairds is attested by their
presence in unprecedented numbers at the Parliament
of 1560.
It has been a principal object of the three preceding
chapters to show how this band of zealots drifted asunder
from the mass of professing Protestants ; and the growth
of Puritanism deepened and perpetuated a division,
which had originated in the selfishness of the aristocracy,
and in the return to power of a Catholic Queen.
Between the nobles who would not receive discipline
and the " men of poor estate " who contemned it,2 was
the small community of "professors" governed in each
district by the minister and his council of elders ; and
an eminent historian has observed that the influence
of the reformed clergy had as much to do with the
training of the middle class in Scotland as the strong
government of the Tudors with the training of the
same class in England.3 It was due to the clergy that
the townspeople and their associates amongst the gentry
obtained a peculiar organisation, which, under the
guidance of a zealous minority, brought them into
conflict with the nobles, with the mass of the
people, and especially, as we shall see, with their
natural ally, the Crown ; and at a very early stage
this democratic tendency was remarked by an acute
observer. "Methinks," wrote Killegrew to Lord
1 Wodrow Miscellany, i. 54.
2 See p. 188. 3 Gardiner, Great Civil War, i. 265.
202 THE NEW RELIGION
Burghley in 1572, "I see the noblemen's great credit
decay in that country, and the barons, boroughs and
such-like take more upon them." l
But, if the Reformation consolidated the power of the
middle class, it was not very favourable to that material
well-being on which the ascendency of such a class must
ultimately depend. It is true that during the infancy
of the new Church a considerable increase took place in
the national wealth. Killegrew, in the letter just
quoted, speaks of the navy of the Scots as "so
augmented as it is a thing almost incredible." In the
same year they are described as enjoying "great traffic
and favour" at Ostend, as having there 14 or 15 sail,
and 50 or 60 at Bordeaux.2 Before the end of the
sixteenth century, several of the merchants and gold-
smiths of Edinburgh had attained to comparative
opulence. George Heriot, whose name still lives in his.
magnificent hospital, became jeweller to the King in
1597. The Duke of Holstein was entertained to a
banquet in the house of Bailie Macmoran in 1598 ; and
King James on more than one occasion lodged in
the fine mansion of Robert Gourlay. To Thomas Foulisy
another wealthy burgess, the Crown was repeatedly
indebted for advances of money. About the year 1594
the royal debt to Foulis amounted to over 26,000/. Scots ;
and in 1601 James owed 180,000^. to Foulis and two
other merchants.3 But the material progress to which
these facts bear witness must be ascribed far less to the
Reformation than to the good government of Moray,
of Morton, and of James himself. A Church which
1 Foreign Calendar, 1572-1574, No. 634. 2 Ibid. Nos. 578, 766.
3 Chambers' Annals, i. 253, 255, 295, 297. The grandeur of Gourlay'a
house is apparent from the woodcut at the end of this volume of the
Annals.
MATERIAL PROGRESS 203
exerted itself to stop the exportation of wheat and the
lending of money at interest ; which protested on
Sabbatarian principles against a Monday market, and
through fear of religious contagion against the trade
with Portugal and Spain ; which required the merchant
to close his booth during two forenoons in the week, to
make Monday a pastime-day for eschewing of the
profanation of the Sabbath, and to observe fasts of a
week's duration — such a Church can hardly claim to>
have promoted the interests of trade. We shall find the
commons in the course of the next century winning
their way to a short-lived supremacy in the State ; but
the religious spirit, which gained this position for the
industrial class, was the most serious of all obstacles to
industrial progress. It was due to the growth of
Puritanism with its interminable dissensions that the
choicest fruits of the Eeformation were reaped only in
the age of the Revolution ; and the colonising projects
of 1698 were as much the outcome of peace with
England as were the negotiations for union of the policy
of Maitland. Nor should we forget that the commons
of Scotland had been trained for centuries in even a
sterner school than that of kirk-session and presbytery.
The long struggle for national existence was of necessity
a popular struggle ; and frequent invasions forced even
the humblest to take an interest in politics. The same
set of causes, which prolonged the feudal organisation in
Scotland, fostered also a spirit which in certain circum-
stances might be fatal to the feudal principle. During
the discussion of Henry VIII. 's matrimonial scheme in
1543 the unflinching patriotism of the people was the
one element in the case which no statesman could afford
to disregard ; and the lords of the English party assured
Sir Ralph Sadler " that, whensoever they brought in
204 THE NEW RELIGION
Englishmen, all their own friends and tenants, or at
least the greatest number of them, will utterly leave
them."1
The Reformed Church was the outcome of the national
character embodied to excess in the genius of Knox ;
and it is not surprising that an institution, which had so
many of the vices of strength, should also have had some
of its virtues. Conspicuous in both categories was a
certain fearless independence of spirit, as thoroughly
honest as it was harsh and crude, the result of shattered
traditions and of that long interregnum which had
prevailed between the collapse of the old faith and the
triumph of the new. We have seen that the destruc-
tion of the monasteries was the outcome rather of
Catholic contempt than of Protestant zeal ; and
the Reformers, though they cared nothing for the
aesthetic associations of the old buildings, were quite
alive to their utility as places of worship. The Book of
Discipline exempted parish churches and schools from
its condemnation of the monuments and places of
idolatry. In 1562 an Act was passed for "upholding
and repairing parish churches." In 1570 the Assembly
called the commendator of Holyrood to account for
allowing the Abbey to become ruinous, and some of
his churches to be turned into sheepfolds ; and in the
same year it issued a general order " for reparation
of kirks decayed.2
The men who valued churches only in so far as they
were capable of being turned to good account, were not
likely to allow any peculiar sanctity in the clerical
office. The Book of Discipline discarded even the
apostolical rite of the imposition of hands on the very
1 Sadler State Papers, i. 255.
2 Quarterly Review, Ixxxv. ; Calderwood, ii. 534 ; iii. 1.
INFLUENCE OF LAYMEN 205
practical ground that the necessity for it had expired
with the miracle. In the Knoxian theocracy cleric and
layman differed in degree only, not in kind,1 and not
invariably even in degree. Erskine of Dun was for
thirty years superintendent of Angus ; in 1572 Andrew
Graham, another layman, was made Bishop of Dun-
blane ; and Buchanan presided more than once as
Moderator of the Assembly.2 In August, 1573, the
Assembly was so crowded with laymen — nobles, Privy-
Councillors, commissioners of provinces, towns, and
kirks — that the clergy had to be accommodated outside
the bar ; and in the following spring the Regent Morton
was invited, not only to attend himself, but to bring all
" of whatever estate " who might happen to be with
him.3 The same fierce light, which exposed the sanc-
tities of private life, beat also on the functionaries of
the Church. The superintendent was tried every six
months by the Assembly ; the minister was examined
against the session, the session against the minister ;
and the people were challenged from the pulpit to assail
the reputation of both. Priestcraft could not exist in
such an atmosphere ; and the clergy, true to the funda-
mental contradiction of Protestantism, insisted both on
the right of the Church to interpret the Bible and on
the duty of the people to study it for themselves. The
Parliament of 1579 enacted that each householder worth
300 merks of yearly rent, and " all substantious yeomen
1 Winzet speaks of Knox and his colleagues as renegades who had
renounced " their priesthood given them by the sacrament of order." —
Winzet's Works, i. 58.
2 In 1600 a schoolmaster was elected and sat as moderator of the Pres-
bytery of Glasgow. In the absence of the minister an elder sometimes
acted as moderator of the kirk -session. — Edgar's Old Church Life in
Scotland, i. 187.
3 Cunningham's Church History, i. 482-483.
206 THE NEW RELIGION
and burgesses" worth 5001. in land and goods, should
have a Bible and psalm-book in the vulgar tongue,
under a penalty of ten pounds ; and next year an
official was commissioned by the Council to search every
house in the realm for the two books inscribed with the
owner's name.1 It was hardly inconsistent in practice
with the spirit of this legislation that the Book of
Discipline should have required the suppression of false
doctrine or that a persecuting clause should have been
inserted in the coronation oath. To a people not at all
inclined to question the so-called essentials of the faith
enough of the Bible remained unappropriated to provide
ample scope for discussion ; and there was the greatest
possible difference between the irrational superiority of
the Catholic priest and the argumentative pre-eminence
of the Protestant minister.
Happily, however, for Scotland, the shadow of clerical
obscurantism has never been suffered to darken the
lives of its people ; and the zeal for education which
had distinguished the ancient hierarchy, even in its
most degenerate days, survived to be almost the sole
link of continuity between the old Church and the new.
Knox in the Book of Discipline sought to improve upon
the existing system of parish schools, burgh schools,
•cathedral schools, and universities ; and though the
clergy could do little in this direction owing to their
failure to recover the patrimony of the Church,2 they
did what they could. In 1562 the Assembly urged
that schools in burghs should be maintained from
"sources hitherto devoted to idolatry;" in 1563 it
1 Chambers' Annals, i. 133.
2 Part of the wealth of the Abbey of Paisley was applied to the founda-
tion of a Grammar School in the town. — -Cameron Lees's Abbey of Paisley
p. 231. This, however, was an exceptional case.
EDUCATION 207
required same order to be taken for the sustentation of
poor scholars; in 1563, 1571, and 1574 it issued com-
missions, however futile, for the planting of schools in
Moray, Banff, Inverness, and all the northern shires ; l
and the fines levied by the kirk-sessions were frequently
applied to assist students in the prosecution of their
studies. The Universities gained much in efficiency
under an ecclesiastical system, poorer indeed, but far
more vigorous than that which had given them birth.
In 1563 a petition was presented to Parliament "in the
name of all that within this realm are desirous that
learning and letters flourish," praying for a reform in
the administration and the curricula of the various
colleges ; and it was mainly through the vigilance of
the General Assembly that the objects of the petition
were ultimately attained. In 1579 the University of
St. Andrews was entirely re-organised ; and similar
reforms were soon afterwards introduced at Aberdeen.
The new scheme was the work of Andrew Melville,
Knox's successor in the leadership of the Church, under
whose influence the Scottish Universities began to
attract students from both England and the continent.
The University of Glasgow was revived, or rather
re-opened, by Melville when he became its Principal in
1574. In 1582 a sum of 4,000 merks, which was all
that remained of the 8,000 left by Bishop Reid to found
a college in Edinburgh, was recovered by the Town
Council, and with the King's consent applied to its
original purpose. It was mainly through the exertions
of James Lawson, one of the ministers of the city, that
the new High School was completed in 1578. Hebrew
was first publicly taught in Scotland at Perth in 1561 ;
and Andrew Melville, who as a boy had learned Greek
1 Grant's Burgh Schools, pp. 78-79
208 THE NEW RELIGION
in the school of Montrose, gave great prominence to
both Greek and Hebrew in his scheme of academic
reform.1
To the influence of the Reformation must also be
ascribed the growing demand for literature, which
caused the Church to claim a censorship, in 1563 over
religious books, and in 1574 over all books whatsoever.2
Of some 300 works printed in Scotland during the
seventeenth century, only 34 had appeared before
the Reformation.3 In 1592 there were at least
seven booksellers in Edinburgh, exclusive of im-
porters. Fourteen complete editions of Sir David
Lindsay's works were issued between 1558 and
1614, nine of these being printed in Scotland ;
and Buchanan's History went through three editions
in three years.4
These various facts testify to the real worth of the
Reformed Church — its honesty, its manliness, its
exuberant vitality ; and whatever evils may have
attended the growth of Puritanism, an institution so
sound at heart might fairly hope to survive the vices of
strength, and in the long run to flourish in its virtues.
Nowhere perhaps is the contrast so happily illustrated
as in Scotland between the intellectual poverty of the
Reformation and the rude abundance of its intellectual
results. Identical in habit of mind with his Catholic
predecessor, superior only in a certain moral earnestness
which was grossly abused, the Scottish Protestant had
nevertheless stumbled on a principle, which led him
through the twilight of the new theology from darkness
1 M'Crie's Lives of Knox and Melville.
2 Booke of the Universal Kirk, i. 35, 310.
3 Dickson and Edmond's Annals of Scottish Printing.
4 Lee's Lectures, Appendix xii.
INTELLECTUAL GAIN
to light. On the inclined plane of the Reformed
Church all beliefs were continually in motion towards
the touchstone of Scripture ; and within the compass of
an uncritical age that barrier to freedom of thought was
practically no barrier at all.
CHAPTER VII
CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586.
DURING the lifetime of Knox, and for six months after
his death, the clergy had to reckon with two classes of
opponents — those whose patriotism made them in-
different or hostile to the reformed religion and those
who upheld the supremacy of the State and their own
material interests against the claims of the Reformed
Church. So long as the war continued between Queen
Mary and her son, the clergy could not afford to quarrel
with their lay associates; but when the Castle of Edin-
burgh was taken in 1573 Protestantism ceased to be in
serious danger; and thus the conflict we have traced
between the Reformation and the new Church was
succeeded by one, as serious and far more permanent,
between the Church and the State.
We shall fail to understand the theory of spiritual
independence as it took root in Scotland, unless we
bear in mind that it was rather forced on the Church
by the necessities of her position than adopted of her
own free will. At the outset, in the struggle with
France and Rome, political and religious forces had been
closely associated ; and the theocratic ideas which Knox
had imbibed at Geneva tended directly to the fusion of
SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENCE 211
the two. Knox indeed was so far from asserting the
native inviolability of the Church that he expressly
denied it. " Who dare esteem," he writes on one
occasion, " that the civil power is now become so pro-
fane in God's eyes that it is sequestered from all
intromission with matters of religion ? " And he takes
pains to prove that "the reformation of religion in all
points" belongs of right to the civil magistrate. If
these words stood alone, they might not be of great
importance, for they occur in that Appellation which
Knox addressed to the nobility against the sentence
passed on him in his absence by the ecclesiastical
authorities. They are amply confirmed, however, from
other sources. Thus the Confession declares that
magistrates are God's lieutenants, appointed after the
manner of the kings of Judah not only for civil policy,
but for maintenance of the true religion ; and both in
doctrine and in external order the Reformers acknow-
ledged the jurisdiction of the State. The Confession,
drawn up at the bidding of Parliament, was voted and
approved, not on the authority of the Church, but
on its own merits ; and the authors of the Book of
Discipline submitted it to the judgment of the Council,
exhorting them to reject nothing which they could not
disprove by God's Word. In this allusion to the
paramount authority of the Scriptures, unimportant as
it seems, we have the key to the whole subsequent
dispute. As the Church to the old priesthood, so was
the Bible to the reformed clergy. It was not the power
of a spiritual corporation that was at stake, but the
supremacy of a divine law to which clerics and laymen
were to be alike subordinate ; and Knox, in failing to
fence off the Church from the State, had meant only to
provide for the absorption of the latter.
212 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
We have seen how it fared with Knox's theocratic
schemes. Scotland, though a small State, had lived
too full a life to be fashioned anew on the Genevan
model ; and the controversy between Knox and Maitland
on the lawfulness of the Queen's Mass initiated the long
struggle between statesmanship and dogmatism, between
the guardian of many interests and the champion of one.
With some slight intermissions, the cleavage now made
opened wider and wider. The Book of Discipline, which
the State refused to sanction, was enforced by the
Church within its own province ; and in the first
Assembly after Mary's return, when the lords questioned
the right of the Church to convene without the Queen's
consent, Knox made the famous reply : " Take from us
the freedom of Assemblies, and take from us the
Evangel ; for without Assemblies, how shall good order
and unity in doctrine be kept?"1 These words have
the true ring of the impending conflict ; but it is
evident that Knox was looking to the danger of schism
within the Church itself, and not to a rupture between
the Church and the State.2
However deep-seated may have been the antagonism
between Knox and Maitland, it was something in the
nature of an accident that Scotland should have been
saddled in the first year of the Reformation with a
Catholic sovereign ; and the deposition of Mary removed
the chief obstacle to the progress of the Church. The
Parliament of December, 1567, which ratified the
achievements of the political revolution, is also an
1 Works, ii. 296.
2 It is in his spirit, not in his ideas, that Knox anticipates the future ;
and it has been well said by the author of a most instructive book that
" in perusing every page of his History we feel heaving under our feet
the ignes suppositos of many a future explosion." — Innes's Law of Creeds,
p. 23, note.
STATUTES OF 1567 213
epoch in ecclesiastical history. In deference to the
doubts which had been raised as to their legality, the
Eeformation statutes were re-enacted ; the Confession
was adopted as the test of Church membership ; no one
was to be admitted to office at the pleasure of the Crown
or to the practice of the law, who did not profess the
reformed religion ; those only were to teach, whether
in colleges and schools or privately, who had been
licensed by the superintendent of the diocese ; and the
kings of Scotland at their coronation were to take an
oath binding them to maintain the true religion as now
established, and to root out heretics and enemies to the
true worship of God. So far the Church had no reason
to complain ; but in the roll of ecclesiastical legislation
there was one very serious omission. In the Assembly
of the previous July the Anti-Marian leaders had
pledged themselves to " labour and press to the utter-
most" that the Church should be "put in full possession
of its patrimony " * — a phrase covering both the tem-
poralities and the tithes. Nevertheless Parliament,
though acknowledging the right of the Church to the
tithes, enacted merely that the thirds of all benefices
should be paid first to the ministers, the surplus being
given to the Crown ; and the Church, on the strength
of this hypothetical surplus, had to assign certain of its
revenues for the King's use. A year and a half later,
we find the Regent Moray lamenting to the Assembly
his inability to put the Church in exclusive possession
of the thirds. He laid the blame on the Estates, who
feared for their purses in the event of the Crown being
deprived of ecclesiastical support ; and he reminded the
Assembly that the Church was greatly interested in the
maintenance of the royal authority.2 It was something,
1 Calderwood, ii. 379. 2Calderwood, ii. 499-500.
214 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
however, that the thirds were now to be levied by
collectors appointed by the Assembly instead of by the
Crown ; and the advantage of this to the clergy may be
inferred from the bitterness of their complaints after
they had allowed the old mode of collection to be
revived, six years later, by the Regent Morton.1
If the funds thus assigned by Parliament had been
fully available for the support of the ministry, they
might very possibly have proved sufficient ; for it is
remarkable that in July, 1568, when the Assembly
suggested that the government should be sustained
on the two parts held by the Papists, or in other words
by the lay impropriators, they declared that the " super-
plus" was wanted not for the ministers, who desired
no more than their reasonable stipends, but for the
schools and the poor.2 Unfortunately, however, owing
to difficulties in collection and other causes, the Church
never enjoyed more than a part of its legal endowment.
In the towns the ministers seem to have been fairly well
paid — Knox at all events had a salary much superior to
that of a Lord of Session ; 3 but the country ministers
— most of them without manse or glebe, officiating in
churches which in 1571 were described as open to wind
and weather and " more like sheep-cots than the house
of God " — were in a deplorable condition. In a petition
of the same year the lot of the clergy is characterised
as worse than that of beggars in that, though equally
1 Coniiell on Tithes, i. 95-96. Queen Mary had placed all small bene-
fices, not exceeding 300 merks in yearly rental, at the disposal of the
Assembly; and this grant was confirmed by the Parliament of 1567.
—Ibid., i. 94.
'J Booke of Universal Kirk, i. 133.
3 Knox's stipend was 400 merks — a sum estimated as equal in 1800 to
£562. Besides this, he was allowed either a house or house-rent. — Lee's
Lectures, Appendix viii.
POVERTY OF THE CLERGY 215
poor, they were not allowed to beg ; l and the Assembly
in 1576, when it was asked whether a minister or
reader might keep " an open tavern," replied merely
that those who did so should observe decorum.2 In
such circumstances great difficulty was experienced,
not only in obtaining recruits for the ministry, which
was largely due to a lack of qualified persons, but in
holding the clergy to their posts. In 1563 a certain
John Sharp was ordered to re-enter the ministry on
pain of censure ; in the same year Acts were passed
against those who " had left their charges and entered
into other vocations more profitable for the belly";3
and in 1570 it was decreed by the Assembly that all
ministers, as well candidates for the office as those already
placed, should pledge themselves never to abandon their
calling under pain of infamy and perjury.4
The distribution of ecclesiastical property, though
it left the government and the clergy as rival claimants
to the thirds, was calculated on the whole to unite
them against a common enemy. The nobles, who
despised discipline, had little respect for the authority
of the Crown ; and it was due to them that Church
and Crown were provided with a revenue far inferior
to the pretensions of one, and perhaps to the combined
needs of both. Unhappily, however, the antagonism
of principle between the Church and the State was
more powerful to create friction than their community
of interest to promote accord. The fusion of the two
1 Bannatyne's Memorials, p. 181.
2 Calderwood, iii. 377. A hundred years later, Archbishop Leightou
deplored "that some of the clergy in the north of England were driven
to keep alehouses, the very men 'who should have strenuously
endeavoured to keep themselves and others out of them.'" — Pearson's
Life, p. ciii.
3Knox, Works, ii. 337. 4 Calderwood, iv.. 2.
216 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
jurisdictions had not answered the expectations of
Knox, who had failed either to establish the Book of
Discipline or to abolish the Queen's Mass ; and it was
natural in such circumstances that the demand for a
separation of powers should come from the Church.
As early as June, 1564, a committee was appointed by
the Assembly " to reason and confer anent the causes
and jurisdiction pertaining to the Kirk." l The Parlia-
ment of 1567, which defined the ecclesiastical juris-
diction in general terms as consisting of the preaching
of the Word, the correction of manners, and the adminis-
tration of the sacraments, appointed a commission, of
which both Knox and Maitland were members, to con-
sider what other special points should appertain to
the jurisdiction, privilege, and authority of the Kirk.2
The Assembly responded to this appeal by appointing
a standing committee of its own ; 3 and from this date
until the Second Book of Discipline was presented to
Parliament in 1578 the Church never ceased to press
its claims to a jurisdiction independent of the State.
To those who study it in the proceedings of the
General Assembly, the action of the ministers during
these ten years has all the appearance of a genuine
movement towards spiritual independence — a move-
ment for which ample warrant might have been found
in the voluntary status of the Church from 1560 to
its establishment in 1567. And certainly, conjoined
with very different motives, there was a real fear of
State interference in matters of religion. In 1568 the
Assembly prohibited the circulation of a book in which
the sovereign was described as " Supreme Head of the
Primitive Kirk " ; 4 and when Morton became Eegent
1 Booke of Universal Kirk, i. 50. 2 Calderwood, ii. 390.
3 Ibid., ii . 396. 4 Ibid. ii. 423 .
THE REGENT MORTON 217
towards the end of 1572, the Church had some reason
to tremble for its liberties. The Earl of Morton, whom
we have met as the destroyer of the Queen's faction,
was too strong a ruler to tolerate any plea of exemption
from the royal authority. Intellectually far inferior to
his great rival, and without that rich imagination which
in Maitland exalted the patriot and the loyalist over
the imperial statesman, he grasped more firmly the true
meaning of the Reformation as a pledge of union with
England ; and to Maitland' s jealousy of clerical inter-
ference he added a strong bias towards Anglican Episco-
pacy and the supremacy of the Crown over the Church.
To Morton the General Assembly was an object both of
suspicion and contempt. He questioned the right of
the clergy to convene the lieges without his permission.
When they sent deputations — sometimes three in a day
— to request his presence, he said he " had not leisure
to talk with them";1 he told "the most zealous
brethren " that there would be no peace or order in
the country until some of them had been hanged ; 2
and he is said to have appointed a joint commission
of clergy and laymen, which for twelve or thirteen days
debated the question whether the supreme magistrate
should not be head of the Church as well as of the
Commonwealth. 3
Morton's aggressive attitude must have quickened the
anxiety of the Church to erect a barrier against the
encroachments of the State ; and such a barrier the
Second Book of Discipline professed to be. The object
of this famous document is to draw a broad distinction
between the civil power or the power of the sword and
the ecclesiastical power or the power of the keys. The
1 Calderwood, iii. 385. 2 Melville's Diary, p. 47.
3 Hume of Godscroft's Houses of Douglas and Angus, ii. 243.
218 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
ecclesiastical power is said to flow from God immedi-
ately and to be spiritual, not having a temporal head on
earth, but only Christ, the head and only monarch of
the Church. The two jurisdictions cannot ordinarily co-
exist in the same person. The magistrate judges
external things only ; the spiritual ruler judges both the
affection and external actions in respect of conscience.
Ministers are subject to the judgment of magistrates in
external things, magistrates to the discipline of the
Church in matter of conscience and religion.
The Second Book of Discipline was the work of
Andrew Melville ; and Melville, many years later,
summed up its purport in the course of his speech to
King James as " God's silly vassal " : " There are two
kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is Christ
Jesus the King arid his kingdom the Kirk, whose
subject King James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom
not a king nor a lord nor a head, but a member." l
Indeed, the substance of the Book is quite opposed to
that conception of two equal and co-ordinate powers
which is suggested by its general tone, and especially
by the continual balancing of the civil jurisdiction
against the spiritual. The magistrate is to judge
external things only, the minister both motive and
action in respect of conscience. The magistrate is
neither to use any spiritual function nor to prescribe
the manner of its exercise, whereas the minister,
though not himself exercising the civil jurisdic-
tion, is to teach the magistrate how it should be
exercised according to the Word.2 The magistrate is to
1 Melville's Diary, p. 245.
2 After this, it is pleasant to read in M'Crie that the Second Book of
Discipline " encourages a friendly co-operation between the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities, but ... at the same time avoids the confounding
ANDREW MELVILLE 219
assist, maintain, and fortify the jurisdiction of the
Church, to make laws for its advancement, to secure
the Church in the enjoyment of its patrimony, to
enforce its censures by civil penalties ; and in general,
where ministers do their office faithfully, he " ought to
hear and obey their voice and reverence the majesty of
God speaking by them." This scheme is obviously
something quite different from that separation of the
spiritual from the civil power on which the Church was
supposed to have been engaged during the ten pre-
ceding years. The theocracy of the First Book of
Discipline is merely re-affirmed in the Second, with this
difference, that the inspired law, which cleric and
layman were to acknowledge individually without dis-
tinction, is now to be imposed on the State through the
agency of a strong and well-organised Church.
Andrew Melville was a reproduction in a smaller and
much poorer mould of the great man who had preceded
him in the leadership of the Church. Knox's broad
aims had been conceived in so narrow a spirit that they
had shrunk from the Christianising of a nation to the
founding of a sect ; and Melville, accepting the new
conditions, sought to organise the sect with a view to
re-conquering the nation. Hence both the strength
and the weakness of the post- Reformation Church — its
theocratic pretensions and its claim to internal freedom,
its rash assaults on the independence of the State, and
its clamorous anxiety for the preservation of its own.
Besides being a good Latinist, Melville was an accom-
plished Greek and Hebrew scholar. Spottiswoode, with
covert sarcasm, describes him as " learned chiefly in the
of their limits." — Life of Andrew Melville, i. 124. An author, so
thoroughly master of his subject, is fully entitled to his opinions, how-
ever intolerant they may be.
220 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
tongues " ; and one must admit, however nobly he may
have used it in the cause of education, that his learning
was not of that diffusive kind which makes wide " the
inward service of the mind and soul." Inferior only to
Knox in headlong zeal, in fierceness of spirit, and reck-
less vehemence of speech, Melville had engrafted on
these gifts of nature the quality which we should now
call doctrinaire. It has been said that, whilst the First
Book of Discipline " seemed to grow out of the times,
the Second aims at elaborating a system from the New
Testament, without reference to circumstances." l Thus
it abolishes the reader 2 no less than the superintendent,
though at that time the readers were at least twice as
numerous as the ministers, and the ministers were
hardly equal in number to a third of the parishes.
Under the influence of Melville the Church became
more harshly theological, more fiercely polemical than it
had been in the days of Knox. It was he who gave
currency to such phrases as " the power of the keys and
the power of the sword," " Christ the only head of his
Church," "bishop another name for pastor"; and the
ceaseless canvassing of these barren themes fore-
shadowed, if it did not anticipate, the time when the
spirit of religion should survive only in enthusiasm for
its outward forms.
The Second Book of Discipline was approved by the
Assembly in April, 1578, and was presented to Parlia-
ment in the following July. The Lords of the Articles
1 Cunningham's Church History of Scotland, i. 444.
2 The reader maintained his position for a long period, despite an Act of
Assembly in 1581 that "no one in time coming should be admitted as
such." One of the last who held the office was James Paterson, the
transcriber of the manuscript of Gordon's Scots Affairs in the Library of
Aberdeen University, who died about 1800. — Preface to Gordon's Scots
Affairs (Spalding Club).
OPPOSITION TO MORTON 221
evaded the demand for ratification by referring the
Book to a mixed commission of clergy and laymen ; and
the proceedings of this commission, which sat at Stir-
ling throughout the last week of the year, proved as
futile and indecisive as its promoters could have wished.
A few unimportant clauses were unanimously admitted ;
all the rest were either passed over or referred to further
reasoning; and in 1581 the Church had so little hope
of a wider recognition of its claims that it caused the
Book to be registered in the Acts of Assembly, ad
perpetuam rei memoriam. On the same principle Knox
had inserted the First Book of Discipline in his History
of the Reformation.
The State could afford to disregard the theocratic pre-
tensions of the Church till it encountered them in
practice ; and we shall find that the first pitched battle
between the two jurisdictions was fought on a narrower
and more definite issue.
In spite of the ruin which had overtaken the* Queen's
cause in 1573, there were still some who waited only
for opportunity to avenge its defeat. The chief of these
unquiet spirits were Maitland's brother-in-law the Earl of
Athol, his younger brother John, and Sir Robert Mel-
ville, the uncle of Kirkcaldy of Grange. Athol and
Argyll were the heads of a coalition which compelled
Morton to resign the Regency in 1578 ; but Morton,
though no longer Regent, soon recovered his power ;
Athol died ; and Mary's friends were reduced almost to
despair, when they were reinforced by a new and some-
what doubtful ally. In September, 1579, Esme' Stuart,
Seigneur d'Aubigny, nephew of the late Regent Lennox
and the King's cousin, came over from France. Osten-
sibly he came merely on a visit of congratulation to his
royal kinsman ; but history has more than confirmed
222 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
" sundry vehement presumptions " that he was a pupil
of the Jesuits and an emissary of the Duke of Guise.
Handsome, affable, and accomplished, he made an easy
conquest of the King, then in his fourteenth year ; and
within a few months he had become Commendator of
Arbroath, Earl of Lennox, Lord High Chamberlain, and
Captain of Dumbarton Castle. The rise of Lennox
boded ill to Morton — the more so as the stranger
hastened to throw aside that profession of Catholicism
which gave so great an advantage to his rival. In 1580
he declared himself a convert to the established religion,
and requested the Assembly to procure him a Protestant
chaplain ; and next year he put his name to that exhaus-
tive execration of all things papal which the Presby-
terians of the next century were content to revive as
the confession of their faith.1 By such cumulative
mendacity he completely pacified the Church, he deluded
the veteran diplomatist, Randolph, and he caused even
his friends abroad to doubt the reality of his imposture.
Morton, whose stern rule had long been tolerated only
as the lesser of two evils, was now in a perilous position ;
and having been detected in a treasonable correspon-
dence with England, he was tried and condemned on a
charge of being accessory to the murder of Darnley.
On June 2, 1581, his head fell on the scaffold;
and the clergy discovered too late that in the " great
opposite to the Book of Policy " they had lost their most
powerful protector and the stoutest champion of the
Protestant faith.2
1The Negative Confession of 1581 became, with some additions, the
National Covenant of 1638.
2 In his last interview with the clergy on the day of his execution,
Morton maintained that in his controversy with the Church he had
" followed that opinion that he thought to be best at that time, in con-
INTRIGUES OF LENNOX 223
In August the Earl became Duke of Lennox ; and
having disposed of Morton, to the intense delight of the
Catholic world, he addressed himself to the constructive
work of his mission. His first object was to renew the
league with France ; but as France had not recognised
James, and could not decently renounce his mother, it
was necessary to provide for the association of the two,
if not in the government, at least in the royal title.
Mary, however, insisted that the association should pro-
ceed as an act of grace from herself; and as this would
imply the illegality of the government, which had
existed in Scotland since 1567, Lennox could gain few
adherents to the scheme amongst the nobles. Moreover,
to make the scheme workable, James would have to
become a Catholic, and of that there was little promise.
Under stress of these difficulties Lennox was led to
embark on wilder projects, which had the enthusiastic
support of the Jesuits, but which, though adopted by
the Duke of Guise, were hardly even approved by the
King of Spain. The government was to be seized in
the Queen's name, and if James refused to concur, he
was to be sent abroad and married to a Catholic princess.
Foreign troops were to be landed in Scotland, either
papal or Spanish ; the Duke of Guise was to make a
descent on the Sussex coast ; and Lennox, as he himself
assured Mary in March, 1582, was to lead an army in
person to her relief.1
After the destruction of Morton, Lennox committed
himself, whether for political or for personal ends, to a
quarrel with the Church. In a subsequent chapter
sideration of the estate of all things as they were." — Calderwood, iii. 565.
Mr. Henderson has a very able vindication of Morton's policy in the
Dictionary of National Biography.
1 Froude, chapter Ixv.
224 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
some account will be given of the circumstances which
gave rise to the establishment of Episcopacy in 1572.
It may suffice here to mention that Melville, ever since
his return from Geneva in 1574, had laboured to over-
throw the new hierarchy ; that the Assembly, after
much pruning of the episcopal office, had abolished
it — so far as it could dispense with the statute law—
in 1580; and that the Second Book of Discipline
expressly disallowed the " fashion of these new chosen
bishops." On the death of Archbishop Boyd of
Glasgow in June 1581 Robert Montgomery, minister of
Stirling, was appointed as his successor ; and it soon
transpired that he had agreed to surrender the
revenues of the see to the Duke of Lennox on the
promise of an annual pension equal to one-fourth of the
whole. The Assembly sought to checkmate Mont-
gomery by ordering an inquiry into his ministerial
conduct ; and meanwhile, it prohibited him from
meddling further with the archbishopric. The Presby-
tery of Stirling, to which the inquiry was referred,
suspended him for non-appearance ; for disregarding
this sentence he was saved only by his submission from
being excommunicated by the Assembly; and in June,
1582, having revived his episcopal pretensions, he
actually was excommunicated by the Presbytery of
Edinburgh. As Montgomery was upheld by the civil
power, these proceedings entailed several sharp en-
counters between the Church and the State. The
Synod of Lothian, the Presbyteries of Stirling, Glasgow,
Dalkeith, Linlithgow, and Edinburgh were summoned
before the King ; and true to their formula of the
headship of Christ, they refused to recognise the King
and Council as judges in an ecclesiastical dispute. On
three several occasions the Government vainly inter-
THE MONTGOMERY CONFLICT 225
vened to stop the proceedings in the Assembly.
Montgomery inaugurated his second attempt on the
archbishopric by coming to Glasgow Cathedral with a
large company of gentlemen, whom the Council had
summoned to his support, and by occupying the pulpit
to the exclusion of the ordinary preacher. The Presby-
tery, being about to censure him for this offence, were
required by the Provost to desist in the King's name ;
and when the Moderator declined to give way, he was
pulled violently out of the chair and hustled off to
prison. Soon afterwards John Durie, one of the
ministers of Edinburgh, for abusing the Duke in his
sermons, was expelled from the city. These events
afforded sufficient provocation to Andrew Melville, who
in the Assembly " inveighed against the blood gullie
(knife) of absolute authority, whereby men intended to
pull the crown off Christ's head and to wring the sceptre
out of his hand." Meanwhile, the excommunicated
prelate was ostentatiously befriended by Lennox, who
scornfully asked a deputation of ministers whether he
was to obey them or the King. On July 13, 1582,
the sentence against Montgomery was annulled by royal
proclamation ; but when, a few days later, he ventured
to appear in Edinburgh, he was set upon by certain
" lasses and rascals of the town,"1 and had to fly for his
life to the Duke's house at Dalkeith.2
The controversy was much embittered by the fact
that the ministers had obtained some knowledge of the
Jesuit plot. As early as October, 1581, when Mont-
gomery's case was first mooted in the Assembly,
Balcanquhal, one of the Edinburgh ministers, preached
1Moysie's Memoirs (Maitland Club), p. 37. King James was vastly
entertained with this incident, when he heard of it at Perth.
2Calderwood, iii. 577-634; Spottiswoode, ii. 282-289.
P
226 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
a sermon in which he said that popery "was maintained
in the King's hall by the tyranny of a great champion
who was called Grace. But if his Grace continued in
opposing himself to God and his word, he should come
to little grace in the end." l Soon afterwards Lennox
quarrelled with his chief supporter, the Earl of Arran ;
and while the dispute lasted, Arran did not scruple to
incite the clergy against the Duke as an enemy to the
faith.2 In the following January John Durie exposed
the association scheme from the pulpit; in May, alarmed
by the arrival of an emissary from the Duke of Guise,
he attacked both Lennox and Arran in the most violent
terms ; and on July 27 the clergy received positive
information from France that Lennox had applied to
the Duke of Guise for a garrison of 500 men.3 Mean-
while a coalition to separate the King from Lennox had
been formed by Gowrie, Mar, Glencairn, and other
Protestant lords ; and the conspirators, sufficiently
alarmed by the news from France, were hurried into
action by a timely warning from Bowes, the English
ambassador, that Lennox, at the instigation of the
Guises, meant to arrest them on a charge of treason.4
James, with neither Lennox nor Arran in his company,
happened to be hunting in the neighbourhood of Perth.
On August 22, 1582 of he was decoyed to Gowrie's
Castle of Euthven ; and next morning when he essayed
to go forth, he found himself a prisoner. For nearly
ten months James remained in the custody of the
Ruthven lords. Lennox made but a feeble resistance ;
the King himself, fearing for his own life, if the Duke
1 Spottiswoode, ii. 284. 2 Ibid. p. 281.
3 Calderwood, iii. 594, 620, 634. A contemporary account of Durie's
sermon of 23rd May is given in Tytler, viii., Appendix viii.
4 Tytler, viii. 107.
RAID OF RUTHVEN 227
remained obdurate, urged him to depart ; and before
the end of the year he was on his way to France.
The Raid of Ruthven ensured the triumph of the
Church in its conflict with the State, and rescued
Protestantism from no ordinary danger. On Septem-
ber 4 a proclamation was issued in the King's
name, declaring that he had never intended to restrain
the free preaching of God's Word or to infringe the
liberty and jurisdiction of the Church courts.1 On the
same day John Durie made a triumphal entry into
Edinburgh. He was escorted from the Nether Bow to
the High Church by a great multitude singing the
124th Psalm ; and the Duke was so enraged at the sight
that he vented his indignation at the expense of his
beard. In a manifesto published at Stirling the
Ruthven lords enumerated the dangers to the true
religion, the crown and the commonwealth, which had
induced them " to repair to his Highness' presence and
to remain with him." They accused Lennox of plotting
to subvert the religion, of involving James in a negotia-
tion with his mother to the prejudice of his own crowr
of persuading him to assert a right of jurisdiction IL
matters purely ecclesiastical, of corrupting his morals
and provoking him "to tarry from the sermons of godly
preachers." The Duke issued a counter-proclamation
denying all the charges and denouncing his adversaries
as traitors, who had forcibly possessed themselves of the
King's person ; to which, with an audacity superior
even to his own, the lords retorted that the "alleged
detaining of the King's Majesty's person by force and
against his will " was " a manifest lie." 2
We have it on the authority of James Melville that
the Church had not been concerned, " neither art,
•t
1 Calderwood, iii. 649-651. 2 Ibid. iii. 651-673.
228 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
part, read, nor counsel," in the enterprise at Ruthven ; l
and perhaps on that account it was the more grateful
to its self-constituted champions. The Assembly of
October, 1582, unanimously voted the Raid to be
" good and acceptable service to God," the King, and the
country ; it required every minister to commend the
" good cause " to his congregation, and all who should
oppose it either in word or deed to undergo the censures
of the Church.2 At so critical a time the action of the
Assembly may have been as politic as it certainly was
courageous and honourable ; but it was unfortunate for
its own future that the Church should have endorsed so
violent a method of subjecting the kingdom of King
James to the kingdom of Christ.
The Ruthven lords looked to Elizabeth as the patron
and the mainstay of their party ; and at the beginning
of 1583 they sent John Colville, chanter of Glasgow
and ex-minister of Kilbryde,3 to seek assistance in
London. Neither this embassy, however, nor another
which Colville with two associates undertook in May,
produced the desired result. Elizabeth did not conceal
her approbation of what the lords had done ; but to the
great disappointment of both Walsingham and Bowes,
she made but a meagre response to their demands for
money ; and Colville pleaded to little purpose that his
friends had no means of paying the 300 men of the
royal guard, and that without a guard James could not
be kept in safety, or in other words a prisoner.*
Meanwhile, the French spared no effort to retrieve the
reverse they had suffered in the expulsion of Lennox.
1 Melville's Diary, p. 95. 2 Eooke of Universal Kirk, ii. 594-596.
3 Colville had deserted the ministry, because he would not "profess
poverty." — Calderwood, iii. 430.
4Tytler, viii. 145 ; Froude, xi. 327.
COLLAPSE OF THE RUTHVEN LORDS 229
On January 1, 1583, La Mothe Fe"nelon arrived at
Berwick on his way to Edinburgh ; and three weeks
later, Meynville, another French envoy, landed at
Leith. Seconded by the King, and liberally supplied
with money, these men easily organised a party
against the Euthven lords ; Gowrie himself became an
object of suspicion to his associates ; and on June 27
James escaped from Falkland to the castle of St.
Andrews, where his friends joined him on the following
day.
Elizabeth now reaped the fruits of her expensive
parsimony. The Duke of Lennox had died in Paris ;
but his henchman, the Earl of Arran, succeeded to his
place, and his son, a boy of thirteen, was recalled from
France. Before the end of the year the English party
had almost disappeared. Gowrie alone, who, if he had
not connived at the King's escape, submitted immediately
thereafter, was suffered to remain at Court ; his
associates were banished, some to France, some to
Ireland ; and Colville, preferring flight to submission,
took refuge at Berwick. Bowes and Walsingham, how-
ever, were little disposed to acquiesce in the collapse of
their schemes ; and with the same instruments which
had overthrown Lennox they now sought to overthrow
Arran. The " decourted noblemen " were easily per-
suaded to attempt a repetition of their achievement at
Kuthven ; and Colville, as before, acted as their medium
of communication with the English Government. But
Arran was not so easily outwitted as Lennox. He had
friends amongst the conspirators who kept him informed
of all their plans ; and when Gowrie, who on March 2
had been ordered to leave the kingdom within fifteen
days, lingered week after week at Dundee — the Court
afraid that he would not go, and his friends afraid that
230 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
he would — Arran sent Colonel Stewart with some horse
to apprehend him. Gowrie was captured on April 15,
after so vigorous a resistance that Stewart had to call
out the townsmen and to land guns from the ships in
the harbour.1 Two day's later, Gowrie's friends, the
Earl of Mar and the Master of Glamis, seized the Castle
of Stirling. They were joined by the Earl of Angus ;
and on the 22nd they proclaimed their resolution to
deliver the King from " that godless atheist, bloody
Haman, and seditious Catiline, James Stuart, called
Earl of Arran."2 On the 25th James himself advanced
from Edinburgh at the head of 12,000 men ; and the
lords, having no more than 300, fled by Lanark and
Kelso to the Border. Thus, of the " lords reformers,"
Gowrie alone remained in the King's hands ; and on
May 2, 1584, he was tried for treason, condemned, and
beheaded.
The result of these events was to dissolve the short-
lived harmony between Church and State. The quarrel
indeed had broken out anew, even before the King's
escape from the Ruthven lords. Much as Gowrie and
his friends must have dreaded the influence of the
French envoys, they could not in decency oppose their
reception at Court. The more zealous of the clergy,
however, were deterred by no such scruples. Meynville
greatly exasperated them by asserting his privilege as
an ambassador in the celebration of Mass. Fe"nelon
was entertained by the city of Edinburgh to a
farewell banquet, at which his colleague was also
present. The session had proclaimed a fast for
the same day; and on February 4, 1583, whilst
the magistrates were making merry with their guests,
the clergy declaimed for four hours against both in the
1 Hume of Godscroft, ii. 322. 2 Calderwood, iv. 28.
MELVILLE BEFORE THE COUNCIL 231
church of St. Giles.1 In December of this year
Parliament, which, like the Assembly, had approved the
Raid of R-uthven, condemned it as treason ; and the new
turn of affairs caused considerable havoc amongst the
leaders of the Church. Durie was banished to Montrose ;
Andrew Melville fled to Berwick ; and after the execution
of Gowrie, he was joined in exile by several of his
colleagues.
The cause of Melville's flight is worthy of particular
attention. In February, 1584, he was called before the
Privy Council to answer for a sermon, in which, alluding
to the fate of James the Third, he had vindicated the
right of the ministry to apply " God's mercy and
judgments " to the reproof of princes. On the first day
he gave what he declared to be a faithful report of his
sermon ; but on the second he declined the jurisdiction
of the Council on the ground that for words spoken in
the pulpit, whether treasonable or not, a minister should
be tried in the first instance by the Church courts.
This proceeding so enraged the King and Arran, now
Lord Chancellor, that they are said to have indulged in
" roarings of lions and messages of death," till the whole
palace resounded ; whereupon Melville, " never jarring
nor dashed a whit," told them " they presumed over
boldly in a constitute estate of a Christian kirk -. . . to
take upon them to judge the doctrine and control the
ambassadors and messengers of a King and Council
greater nor they, and far above them." And then,
by way of proving their incompetence, he threw
down a Hebrew Bible, and challenged the Council
to judge him by that, if they could. The Council,
finding themselves to be judges in the case, ordered
him to be confined in Blackness Castle ; and Melville,
iCalderwood, iii. 699-700 ; Spottiswoode, ii. 298.
232 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
making a feint of obedience, slipped away to Ber-
wick.1
Melville's plea had often been advanced before, though
never in so formal a manner ; and the question it raised
went to the very root of the controversy between the
Church and the State. His nephew vainly argued that
litigants frequently repelled the Council in favour of the
Court of Session2 — as if there could be any analogy
between preferring one to another of the King's courts,
and appealing from the King's own Council to a court in
which he had no authority at all. Melville knew better
what was involved in his theory of the two kingdoms ;
and the fact that he denied the King's jurisdiction only
in the first instance was a concession to that merely
nominal equality of Church and State which we have
found to be characteristic of the Second Book of Dis-
cipline. If the guardians of the Church were entitled
to denounce everything to its prejudice in affairs of
state, the King, in defence of lay interests, was equally
entitled to complain of the conduct of the Church. So
much was admitted even by the extremists of the
Melville school. But they maintained that, whilst the
State must apply for redress to the Church courts,
these courts, as against the State, were entitled to act
entirely on their own initiative. Thus for a proclama-
tion held to be injurious to the Church the King's
advocate, eighteen months before, had been called to
account by the Assembly,3 whereas for a sermon alleged
to be seditious Melville refused to plead before the
1 Melville's Diary, p. 101 ; Calderwood, iv. 3-12.
2 Dialogue between Zelator, Temporiser, and Palemon, attributed to
James Melville. — Calderwood, iv. 302. This argument is eagerly adopted
by M'Crie— i. 207.
3 Calderwood, iii. 679-680.
DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES 233
Council. The Presbytery or the Assembly was to
judge, in the first instance, whether a minister had
injured the State. Neither of these courts was at all
likely to convict the accused ; and if they did not
convict him, the State could not exercise its right of
jurisdiction without the certainty of a conflict with the
Church.
Such a claim must necessarily have been repudiated
by the civil power ; and it cannot be defended histori-
cally except on grounds entirely different from those on
which it was advanced in practice.1 Unfortunate as was
the tendency of the ecclesiastical movement, its methods
were comparatively wholesome. Theocracy was not to
be established without a revolution ; and thus the
pioneers of spiritual despotism were compelled to rely
mainly on democratic forces. The Scottish Parliament
— a one-chambered House, at the mercy of the King and
the nobles, and existing only to register the decrees of
its own Lords of the Articles — could be but the most
inadequate expression of the national life. On the
other hand, the General Assembly, entirely popular in
character and pervaded by a strongly Puritan spirit,
fulfilled many of the functions of a Scottish House of
Commons ; and in the towns, where religion savoured
most of politics, the want of newspapers was made good
to some extent in the bi-weekly sermon. I The per-
sistence of these agencies — the Assembly and the
Pulpit — against the efforts of the State to extinguish
their freedom was infinitely more important than that
they should succeed in the purpose for which Melville
was attempting to use them. It was not desirable at
1 " The weakness of the cause of the ministers lay in this, that they
defended on religious grounds what could only be justified as a political
necessity." — Gardiner's History of England, i. 55.
234 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
that particular time — whatever it might be in the long
run — that the power of the Crown should be diminished.
The country required a strong ruler as urgently, and for
the same reason, as England under the kings of York
and Tudor ; and Moray did well to remind the clergy
that their interests and those of the Crown were sub-
stantially the same.
It would be unjust, however, not to recognise that
the alliance of the clergy with the people, or rather with
the middle class, had its origin in causes older, more
permanent, and more honourable than their conflict
with the State. A crowded and representative Assembly
was the natural outcome of a non -sacerdotal Church.
The Second Book of Discipline in this respect made no
change. It restored indeed the ceremony of ordination,
which the First had discarded ; but the main purpose of
the Book, as has been admirably said, is to distinguish,
not between cleric and layman, but " between the lay-
man acting by authority from his brethren as an officer
of the Church, and the layman possessed by indepen-
dent title of civil power or influence."1 It was just
this non-exclusivenesss of the clergy, however, that
made them so thoroughly obnoxious to the civil power.
Under cover of religion, they absorbed politics into the
pulpit, and politicians as lay elders into the Assembly ;
and what they had wrested from the State in the lust
of spiritual domination they refused to restore on the
plea of spiritual independence. The modern advocates
of this plea in Scotland are justified in tracing their
descent to Melville ; but it is an eloquent testimony to
the triumph of the State that their only anxiety should
be to retain what the aggressive Melville regarded merely
as his first line of defence.
1 Duke of Argyll's Presbytery Examined, p. 46.
THE " BLACK ACTS 235
The flight of Melville and the execution of Gowrie
were followed by one of those violent reactions which
were the natural result of the extreme tension then
existing between Church and State. In May, 1584, in
a Parliament " almost ended before it was well heard
of," the Estates professed to ratify the reformed religion,
and at the same time to deprive it of its theocratic
character. After an Act confirming the " sincere preach-
ing of the Word and administration of the sacraments,"
the King and his Council were declared to be judges
competent to all persons, spiritual and temporal, in all
causes ; whoever declined the jurisdiction of King and
Council, or sought to impugn the dignity and authority
of the Three Estates was to incur the pains of treason ;
all assemblies and conventions not authorised by Parlia-
ment or by the King's express license were discharged ;
the power of the bishops was ratified and approved ;
and no person, either in sermons or familiar conferences,
was to utter anything to the reproach of the King and
Council, or to meddle in affairs of State.1 When these
statutes, popularly known as the " Black Acts," were
proclaimed at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, Pont and
Balcanquhal protested against them ; and immediately
afterwards Balcanquhal and two other ministers fled
to Berwick, whither they were followed by James
Melville.2
Not content with promulgating these rigorous laws,
the King and Arran took measures to ensure their
1 Act. Parl. iii. 292.
2Eobert Pont was a Lord of Session as well as minister of St.
Cuthbert's. Edinburgh. Spottiswoode (ii. 315), followed by several
modern writers, is mistaken in saying that Pont fled with the other
ministers ; in the following December, being then in ward, he was one of
nine ministers who presented a remonstrance to the King. — Calderwood,
iv. 211.
236 CHURCH ANT) STATE, 1560-1586
acceptance on the part of the Church. In November
all the ministers between Stirling and Berwick, on pain
of being deprived of their livings, were required to sign
a declaration that they would comply with the late Acts
of Parliament and yield obedience to the bishop of the
diocese. Only eleven ministers could be induced to
subscribe ; and the contumacy of the rest was punished
by a general suspension of stipends. Towards the end
of the year, however, Craig, Duncanson, and Brand, the
three royal chaplains, were permitted to subscribe
" according to the Word of God " ; and Craig was so
much pleased with this reservation that he wrote a
letter, endorsed by the King, urging his brethren to
avail themselves of it. The brethren made haste to
comply. In a few weeks all the ministers south of the
Forth, except ten, had submitted ; and meanwhile,
Erskine of Dun was busy gaining subscribers in the
North.1 When Erskine, a man of high character and
exceptional wealth, could exert himself in such a cause,
there must certainly have been other than sordid
motives at work ; and we shall find, indeed, that the
excesses of the High Presbyterians had greatly injured
their cause.
A considerable body of refugees, lay and clerical, had
now collected beyond the Border. In deference to the
protests of the Scottish Government, they were removed
successively from Berwick to Newcastle, from Newcastle
to Norwich, and from Norwich to London. Adversity
appears to have quickened the piety of the nobles.
At the request of the Earl of Angus, James Melville
drew up a miniature Book of Discipline to be " used
in the Company of those Godly and Noble Men of
1Calderwood, iv. 209-211, 246-247, 351 ; Melville's Diary, p. 135 ; Tytler,
viii. 220.
THE MASTER OF GRAY 237
Scotland " ; and it is said to have been faithfully-
observed.1
The exiles were indebted for their return to a very
unpromising instrument. Patrick, Master of Gray, was
a brilliant and most accomplished courtier, reputed to
be the handsomest man of his time,2 and known
to the historian as the most faithless of many un-
scrupulous politicians. He had spent several years
in Paris ; and he returned to Scotland, on the last
of three occasions, with the young Duke of Lennox in
November, 1583. The trusted counsellor of Queen
Mary and the Duke of Guise, he made his way at
the Scottish Court by betraying the schemes of both ;
and in furtherance of the same policy he was sent on an
embassy to London in the autumn of 1584. James was
anxious that the banished lords should be given up or
at all events expelled ; and he authorised Gray, as the
price of this and other concessions, to make known to
Elizabeth what he had revealed to himself of the
Catholic intrigues. But Gray in his own interest did
not scruple to betray James and Arran as well as Mary.
In order to displace Arran, he privately urged Elizabeth
to send back the exiles ; and finally, as a shorter road to
the same end, he conspired with Leicester to kill him.3
Elizabeth, however, looked coldly on the assassination
scheme ; and she was unwilling to risk a rupture with
James by forcing him to face his rebels. Meanwhile,
Arran was striving to secure himself with assistance
from France ; and Gray at last forced Elizabeth's hand
1 Amongst other items, it prescribed four sermons in the week, common
prayers twice daily, a chapter and psalm at dinner and supper, and a
week's fast every month. — Melville's Diary, p. 125.
2 His beauty was of the feminine type familiar to us in the portraits of
Claverhouse.
8 Froude, xi. 581.
238 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
by threatening to desert the English cause for the
•/ O
French. Towards the end of October the lords were
allowed to make their way to the Border. The Arran
Government had become exceedingly unpopular in Scot-
land, partly through its own demerits, and partly
through a frightful visitation of the plague ; l and on
November 2, 1585, the lords, with 8,000 men,
entered Stirling in triumph. Arran fled ; and it is
evidence of the sole vein of statesmanship in Gray's
reckless intrigues that his fall was followed by the con-
clusion of a defensive league with England.
The representatives of the Raid of Ruthven, including
several of its actual leaders, such as Mar and Glamis,
were now again in power ; and the politics of the party,
sanctified by more than a year's training under James
Melville's rule of discipline, were expected to work
mightily for the relief of the Church. To this, however,
the young King was a serious obstacle. James, in his
twentieth year, had arrived almost at the maturity of
his powers, and James was prepared to insist on the
principle established in the previous year, that religion
was one thing and theocracy another. The ministers at
his own request presented in writing their objections to
the Acts of 1584 ; and he himself defended them in a
short but vigorous paper, the composition of which is
said to have occupied him for twenty-four hours. He
acknowledged Jesus to be the Head of the Church ; in
matters merely ecclesiastical and impertinent to his calling
—"matters of doctrine in religion, salvation, heresies, or
1 " Thus God prepared the people at home that summer." — Melville's
Diary, p. 148. According to Hume of Godscroft, the plague began im-
mediately after the flight of the ministers ; and " after their entry into
Stirling it ceased, not by degrees or piecemeal, but in an instant" — "a
notable wonder," which Hume ranks next to the defeat of the Armada. —
ii. 372-373.
THE " BLACK ACTS " CONFIRMED 239
true interpretation of the Scriptures " — he disclaimed all
right of -judgment ; and for such matters, secured to the
Church by the first Act, he promised never to call any
preacher in question.1 Thus in the Parliament of
December, though an Act of restitution was passed in
favour of the banished ministers, the " Black Acts," far
from being repealed, were fortified by a new law against
seditious speeches. With the exception of the Earl
of Angus, the Ruthven lords easily accommodated
themselves to the King's humour ; and James Melville
was so unprepared for their polite indifference that, by
his own account, he "looked like one that had fallen
out of the lift, he was so amazed." Melville's friends,
indeed, were not the whole of the new Government,
which comprised, as parties to the late revolution,
the head of the banished house of Hamilton, Lord
Maxwell, the Catholic Warden of the West Marches,
and such of Arran's own associates as had contributed
to his fall — Maitland, Sir Robert Melville, and the
Master of Gray. But no excuses could exempt either
the King or his councillors from the wrath of the
restored clergy. " We ran to the lords, every one
after another, and sometimes all together," writes
Melville, " we discharged our consciences to them ;
we threatened them ; worried them, and cursed them."
At the close of the Parliament three ministers —
Watson, Hpwieson, and Gibson — declared from the
pulpit that the King, like Jeroboam, the seducer of
Israel, would be rooted out and conclude his race, if
he maintained wicked Acts against God ; and Gibson
added that he had once taken Arran to be the perse-
cutor of the Church, but he now saw it was the King
himself.2 St. Andrews was the stronghold of the High
1 Calderwood, iv. 459-463. 2 Moysie's Memoirs, p. 56 ; Calderwood, iv. 487.
240 CHURCH AND STATE, 1560-1586
Presbyterians. The Provincial Synod of Fife met
there in April, 1586 ; and James Melville,' in his
opening sermon, furiously attacked Archbishop Adam-
son, who " with a great pontificality and big counte-
nance," was sitting beside him. The Synod, in the
usual form, decreed that the Archbishop should be
esteemed "as an ethnic or publican " ; and Adamson
retaliated by excommunicating the two Melvilles and
several other ministers.
The Melvilles, however, had no longer the support of
an undivided Church. By permitting the use of Craig's
reservation, James had induced the great majority of the
ministers to subscribe the Acts of 1584 ; and in virtue
of this wise concession, he had reconciled them, not
indeed to the abjuration of extreme principles, but to
the necessity of modifying them in practice. Amongst
these chastened spirits the exiles were far from being
honoured as martyrs for the faith. Craig spoke of them
contemptuously as the " peregrine ministers"; and in
reply to the taunts of Gibson, he preached a sermon in
which he inculcated obedience, even to tyrants, as a
religious duty. When the Assembly met in May, 1586,
David Lindsay, " a man wrise and moderate," l and the
King's own choice, was elected to the Chair. Arch-
bishop Adamson, on promise of good behaviour, was
released from the sentence pronounced against him by
the Synod of Fife ; and Episcopacy, though in a very
attenuated form, was once more accepted by the Church.
In this Assembly, writes Melville in his Diary, " was
first espied what the fear and flattery of Court could
work in a Kirk amongst a multitude of weak and incon-
siderate brethren."
1 Spottiswoode, ii. 299.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHUECH AND STATE, 1586-1603.
WE have now traced the rivalry of Church and State up
to the point at which it enters on a new phase through the
rise of a moderate party within the Church itself. Hence-
forward, in ordinary times, the zealots were but feebly
supported by their own colleagues; and in 1599, when
the Church had surrendered all her most important pre-
tensions, one of them declared, with some reason, that
she had yielded not " so much to the King as to some
ministers whom it became to be otherwise occupied." x
The Assembly of 1586 had shown a fairly tractable
spirit ; and a change in the foreign relations of Scotland
augured well for the continuance of this accord between
the clergy and the Crown. James's first quarrel with
the Church had been occasioned by Jesuit intrigues at
Court ; and he was now giving pledges for his fidelity
to the faith. In 1585 Philip II. had begun to prepare
for that vast undertaking known and prayed for amongst
the Catholics as " the enterprise of England." In May
of that year, before the return of the exiles, and whilst
Arran was still in power, Elizabeth made certain pro-
posals to James for their mutual defence ; in July a
1 Calderwood, v. 738.
Q
242 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
Convention of Estates at St. Andrews empowered the
King, and such of his Council as he might appoint, to
negotiate a " Christian league " with England ; and this
commission was ratified in the same Linlithgow Parlia-
ment, which so exasperated the Melvilles by strengthen-
ing, instead of repealing, the Acts of 1584. In his speech
to the Convention James warmly commended the
alliance as the first step towards a league of all
Protestant Powers against the " bastard Christians " of
France and Spain.1 The commissioners of the two
kingdoms met at Berwick in the following summer ;
and the treaty was proclaimed there on July 5, 1586.
It was no mere coincidence that, during the progress
of the treaty, events were taking place in England
calculated to subject it to the severest strain. The
English Government was anxious to disarm the hostility
of James in the event of its being necessary to take
certain proceedings against his mother. Two months
before the proclamation at Berwick, Queen Mary,
unknown to herself, had been detected in those intrigues
with Babington for the assassination of Elizabeth, which
were to cost her her life. Babington was arrested in
August, 1586 ; and he and his accomplices — fourteen in
all — were executed next month.
For her share in this conspiracy the Scots were pre-
pared to see Mary closely imprisoned ; and James, on
this view of the case, had no motive to interfere. He
had never known his mother, and to his knowledge, he
had never seen her. He knew — for the English Govern-
ment, having seized Mary's papers, had sent him a copy
of the will — that she had disinherited him in favour of
Philip of Spain ; 2 and he knew also that she had
recommended her friends in Scotland to seize him and
1 Calderwood, iv. 373-375. 2 Fronde, xii. 177.
QUEEN MARY SENTENCED TO DEATH 243
hand him over either to Philip or to the Pope.1 But a
very different spirit prevailed at Holy rood, when the
news came that Mary had been tried by a commission of
peers, found guilty, and sentenced to death. In all
haste William Keith was despatched to London ; and
when Keith reported the ill success of his mission,
James sent him instructions so strongly worded that
Elizabeth, on hearing them, burst into a paroxysm of
rage. The nation was profoundly moved. Lord Claud
Hamilton swore that, if Mary's life was taken, he would
cross the Border with 5,000 men and set Newcastle in
flames ; and the populace of Edinburgh were so excited
that James and his ministers could not stir abroad
without being assailed with cries for vengeance and
execrations of the English Queen.2 But James, in the
interest of his succession in England, soon repented of
his message to Keith. In December he sent Sir Robert
Melville and the Master of Gray — the friend of Mary
and her bitter enemy — to present fresh remonstrances
and to apologise for the violence of the last ; and Gray,
by his own confession, made the worst even of this con-
tradictory mission by quoting to Elizabeth the terrible
adage — Mortui non mordent.
As James's temper cooled and the news from England
became more and more alarming, the popular fury rose
so high that the Council deemed it necessary to make
an ordinance against seditious speeches and libels ; 3 and
it says something for the hardihood as well as for
the bigotry of the High Presbyterians that at such a
crisis they ventured to defy both the nation and the
King. On February 1, 1587, prayers were ordered to
1 Mary to Charles Faget, May 20, 1586 ; quoted by Tytler, viii. 265-268.
2 Robertson, Appendix xiii.
3 Privy Council Register, iv. 141.
244 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
be made for Queen Mary in all the churches ; and
James, knowing how such a subject might be abused in
the pulpit, was careful to prescribe the exact form of
words. After their usual prayer for himself, the clergy
were to " pray also to God to illuminate the queen, his
said dearest mother's soul with the light of his only
verity, and to preserve her body from all apparent
evil. " l With this order a certain number of the
ministers refused to comply, partly because they regarded
it as an intrusion of the civil power, and partly because
it limited their freedom of speech. The ministers of
Edinburgh, not content with a mere refusal, induced a
certain John Cowper to occupy the pulpit at the very
hour when Archbishop Adamson, by order of the King,
was to preach the Wednesday sermon. This man
showed so little disposition to give place that James
sent an officer of the Guard to fetch him out ; whereat
" Mr. John raschit mightily upon the pulpit," and
declaring that that day would bring a plague upon the
city and rise in witness against the King in the day of
judgment, he came down the stairs, and all the women,
with great clatter and uproar, went out of the church.'2
This pitiful episode was turned to good account by
Adamson, a man of great ability and the most eloquent
preacher of his time. Amongst the audience there may
have been some of those " Queen's citizens " who had
fought and suffered for Mary under Maitland and
Kirkcaldy of Grange ; and as the archbishop discoursed
on the duty of Christians to pray for all men, he was
heard in silence and with deep emotion.
1 Privy Council Register, iv. 140.
2 " The haill wyfis removit with a great clamour." — Moysie's Memoirs,
p. 59. How, who was present and remained, says : " All almost ran out of
the kirk, especially the women." — History of the Kirk (Wodrow edition),
p. 116. See also Spottiswoode, ii. 356, and Privy Council Register, iv. 142.
THREATS OF VENGEANCE 245
Five days later — on February 8, 1587 — Mary Stewart
was beheaded in the hall of Fotheringay Castle. It
is said that James could not quite conceal his joy
at finding himself "sole king"; but throughout the
country the news continued for some time to make
a profound impression. Sir Robert Carey, Elizabeth's
own cousin, hastening down with apologies,1 was stopped
at Berwick ; the Master of Gray, convicted of treachery
during his late mission, was disgraced and banished ;
and, as the summer wore on, the Scottish Borderers in
six successive forays carried fire and sword across the
English frontier. At the meeting of Parliament in
July the Chancellor Maitland, who, with his dying
brother, had held out to the last for Mary in the Castle
of Edinburgh, made an impassioned speech ; and the
Estates offered in the King's quarrel with England to
spend both goods and life.2 But James, though out-
wardly in sympathy with his people, had no intention
of breaking the league. Even to avert his mother's
execution he had refused to threaten England with
war ; and he could not make war now, except to gratify
a thirst for vengeance, in which personally he did not
share at all. In this summer of 1587 Philip's Armada
had been on the point of sailing ; and, apart from his
designs on religion, it was well known at Holy rood that
Philip meant not only to dethrone Elizabeth, but to
1 Elizabeth made a scapegoat of Secretary Davidson, who, she
pretended, had sent off the warrant without her knowledge or approval.
He was disgraced, and condemned by the Star Chamber to pay an
enormous tine.
2Tytler, ix. 8, 13, 14. The author of the History of King James the
Sext echoes what James himself admitted to be the voice of " the
many" : "More just occasion had never prince on the earth nor this
had . . . War indeed should never be so eschewit that any slander
should ensue upon our negligence." — p. 236.
246 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
supplant James as her successor by himself. In such a
state of things there was but one course, not for
Protestants only, but for all loyal Scotsmen ; and
Maitland, devoted as he had been to Mary, was true at
this crisis to the league with England. Towards the
end of May, just when the Armada was leaving the
Tagus, James himself advanced against Lord Maxwell,
who was levying troops for the King of Spain, and,
with the aid of an English battering train, reduced his
castle of Lochmaben. About the same time the Estates,
after speeches both by the King and Maitland, resolved
that preparations should be made for resisting the
Spaniard. Thus in July, 1588, when English seamen
were vindicating their title to that supremacy of the
seas which was to be the strength and the glory of a
united kingdom, Scotland stood prepared, if necessary,
to fight in the same quarrel. Watches were set at the
ports ; beacons were piled upon the hills ; and in every
shire the lieges were being mustered and drilled.1
The career of Maitland of Lethington seems almost to
repeat itself backward in the case of his younger
brother John, the ancestor of the Earls of Lauderdale.
Both statesmen were essentially, and above all things,
patriotic. As the minister and the champion of Mary
Stewart, Queen of Scots, and heir-presumptive to the
British crown, the elder Maitland, in his dealings with
England, had drifted from friendship, through baffled
diplomacy, into war. His brother, associated with him
in his failure, was destined ultimately to achieve his
success. Coming into power with other friends of Mary
through the influence of the Guises after the fall of
Morton, he had represented those foreign interests,
which were working towards the restoration of the
1 Spottiswoode, ii. 383-385.
MAITLAND OF THIRLESTANE 247
exiled queen. But as the minister of King James, the
successor of Mary and her rival, he was borne forward
to a point at which the interests of Scotland once more
coincided with those of England. At the crisis of 1588
he was so much the mainstay of the English and
Protestant cause that the Catholics were continually
plotting his death ; and the Armada, directed against
both Elizabeth and James, was the counterpart of that
design of the Guises to annex Scotland and to conquer
England, which had made Lethington the leader of the
Congregation. Since the year 1584 John Maitland had
been Secretary of State ; in 1587 he became Lord High
Chancellor ; and from this period — with the exception
of one year — to his death in 1595 he exercised so great
an influence over the King that James was at pains
publicly to absolve him from the imputation of " leading
him by the nose, as it were, to all his appetities." l
In 1590 he was raised to the peerage as Lord Maitland
of Thirlestane.
With no pretensions to the genius of his elder brother,
Lord Maitland possessed many of his personal qualities.
He resembled him in his literary tastes,2 in his gift of
1 Spottiswoode, ii. 401.
2 He was the author of several poems both in Latin and English, and
Spottiswoode describes him as " a man of rare parts, of a deep wit, learned,
full of courage." — ii. 464. A certain degree of culture was by no means
uncommon at this period amongst the Scottish aristocracy. The Regent
Morton had a fine taste for " planting and building," especially for the
laying out of gardens. The Earl of Gowrie was " a scholar, fond of the
fine arts, a patron of music and architecture." — Tytler, viii. 173 ; and
Hume of Godscroft speaks of walking with him in his gallery, "newly
built and decored with pictures." — ii. 318. Of Arran, Lord Hunsdon
wrote to Burghley, " One of the best tongues that I have heard. He has
a princely presence. Latin is rife with him and sometimes Greek."—
Froude, xi. 494. Dr. Matthews, Dean of Durham, wrote thus to Burghley
of the Earl of Bothwell, the maternal nephew of Queen Mary's third hus-
band : " This nobleman hath a wonderful wit and as wonderful a
248 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
sarcasm, in his love of mirth and raillery, and in his
charming manners. To immense capacities for work he
added a fund of unfailing good sense, which caused
Lord Burghley to describe him as " the wisest man in
Scotland " ; and to Burghley we find him writing quite
in his brother's style of " this microcosm of Britain,
separate from the continent world, naturally joined in
situation and language, and most happily by religion." l
Thirlestane was no more favourable than Lethington to
the theocratic pretensions of the Presbyterian clergy.
In 1585 he drew up certain articles, subsidiary to the
Acts of 1584, to be subscribed by all preachers and
office-bearers in the Church, amongst which occurs the
somewhat curious one that they should not allege the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit when called to account for
any of their acts or speeches, but on the contrary should
" grant their offences as men and humbly crave pardon
as subjects." 2 Next year, after the Synod of Fife had
excommunicated Archbishop Adamson, he counselled
the King to leave the ministers to their own courses,
saying "that in a short time they would become so
intolerable as the people would chase them forth of the
country." 3 But Thirlestane' s relations with the clergy
improved with the development of his politics, just as
Lethington's in the same way had gone from bad to
worse. In August, 1588, before the defeat of the
Armada was known, cordial messages passed between
the Court and the Assembly ; and the hatred borne
towards the Chancellor by the entire Catholic and
volubility of tongue . . . competently learned in the Latin ; well
languaged in the French and Italian ; much delighted in poetry."—
Tytler, ix. 96. Sir James Melville, the Master of Gray, and the fifth Earl
Marischal, founder of Marischal College, Aberdeen, were all accomplished
men. For Lord Menmuir, the most accomplished of all, see p. 271.
1 Tytler, ix. 49. 2 Calderwood, iv. 350. 3 Spottiswoode, ii. 343.
PRESBYTERY ESTABLISHED BY STATUTE 249
Spanish faction brought him more and more into
harmony with the Church. In January, 1589, the
ministers obtained the royal assent to a petition, in
which they craved large powers for the trial and prose-
cution of Papists ; l it was mainly to their exertions that
James attributed the quietness of the country whilst he
was absent on his matrimonial expedition to Denmark
from October of this year to May of the next ; in the
following August he raised a storm of exultation in the
Assembly by warmly commending the Scriptural purity
of the Kirk 2 ; and almost immediately afterwards the
Council issued stringent orders against certain ecclesias-
tical offenders — excommunicated persons, abusers of the
sacraments, and troublers of ministers in the discharge
of their functions.3
In the growth of these friendly relations between the
clergy and the Crown we have the key to that famous
Act of 1592—" the ratification of the liberty of the true
Kirk," which is commonly regarded as the Presbyterian
charter. This Act was admittedly the work of Maitland ;
1 Calderwood, v. 2.
2 He is said also to have spoken contemptuously of the Anglican
service as "an ill said Mass in English, wanting nothing but the liftings,"
i.e. the elevation of the Host. The only contemporary authority for the
speech in this sense is Scot — Apologetical Narration (Wodrow edition),
p. 57— who is copied almost verbatim by Calderwood, v. 106. James
Melville, who was Moderator of this very Assembly, makes no mention of
the speech, and on this ground it is rejected as spurious by Mr. Grub.-—
Ecclesiastical History, ii. 252. It is difficult to believe that James could
have maligned the Anglican ritual at a time when, in deference to the
complaints of Elizabeth, he was trying to restrain the clergy from praying
for the persecuted Puritans. But, in the circumstances, his eulogy of the
Presbyterian Church is very probable. Spottiswoode omits both eulogy
and censure, and the speech, as he gives it, has quite a different turn. —
ii. 409-410.
3 Privy Council Register, iv. 521. The significance of this and other
edicts is well explained by Professor Masson in his admirable Preface.
250 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
and the clergy believed that they owed it rather to
the exigencies of Maitland's position than to his good-
will. On February 7, 1592, the Earl of Moray, son-
in-law of the Regent, was attacked and slain by the
Catholic Earl of Huntly ; a tremendous outcry arose
from all the pulpits ; and Maitland, who had given
orders for Moray's arrest, and was suspected of being
privy to the murder, felt the full force of the storm.
But if this incident was the occasion of the Act in
favour of Presbytery, it can hardly have been the
cause. Amongst the Privy Council Papers there is one
dated August 11, 1590, in which it is recommended
that the jurisdiction of the Kirk, its Assemblies and
discipline, should be authorised by Act of Council and
Convention, if any such should be held, before the next
Parliament;1 and the statute of 1592 was so far from
being a mere surrender that Spottiswoode describes it as
passed " in the most wary terms that could be devised." !
Its object evidently was to establish Presbytery as a
system of ecclesiastical government, and at the same
time to discountenance its theocratic pretensions. Thus,
whilst the Act of 1584 in favour of the bishops was
expressly annulled, the Act asserting the royal supremacy
remained intact, subject only to a declaration that it
should not be prejudicial to the privilege given by God
to the spiritual office-bearers in the Kirk ; and whereas
hitherto the Assembly had appointed its own time and
place of meeting, this right was now to be exercised by
the King or his commissioner, and only in the absence
of both by the Assembly itself. In 1584 James and
Arran had sought to distinguish between religion and
theocracy ; and in 1592, except for the substitution of
1 Miscellaneous Privy Council Papers : Register, iv. 831.
- History, ii. 421.
PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS 251
presbyters for bishops, James and Maitland adhered to
the same principle.
And yet, outcome as it was of a deliberate policy, the
settlement of 1592 is rather an episode than an epoch
in the history of the Scottish Church. The King and
the clergy had been brought into line through the
imminence of a common danger ; but unfortunately this
danger developed in such a way as to become the cause
of a new and more serious quarrel. In Scotland the
destruction of the Armada stimulated rather than
extinguished the strife of creeds. King James had
always been regarded by the Catholics less as an enemy
than as a possible ally ; until the Master of Gray over-
turned it in 1584, the association scheme had a fail-
chance of success ; and the league with England, for
which Gray's treachery opened the way, had been
strained almost to breaking through the general indig-
nation aroused by the fate of Mary. Maitland's
impassioned speech to Parliament in July, 1587, greatly
encouraged the friends of Spain ; and despite the
passing of several anti-papal statutes, it was not till the
expedition against Lord Maxwell in the following May
that Scotland was definitely committed to the Protestant
side.
Henceforward the only hope of the Catholics was in
succour from abroad. In Scotland the penal laws were
even more severe than in England ; and James, though
he tried hard to mitigate them in practice, was now
greatly hampered by his alliance with the Church. In
every parish suspected persons were sought out by the
kirk-session, and compelled, not merely to come to
church, but to sign the Confession of Faith ; and this
test even Huntly, the leader of the Catholics, was forced
to subscribe. Early in 1589 the English Government
252 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
intercepted letters from Huntly, Errol, Maxwell, and
Mary's friend, the Protestant Lord Claud Hamilton, to
Philip and the Duke of Parma, in which they offered,
with the aid of 6000 Spaniards, to co-operate in a
new invasion of England ; and these letters were
handed to the King at noon on February 27, whilst he
was sitting in the Court of Session, and several of the
conspirators with him. James at first did not take the
matter very seriously ; but when he heard, six weeks
later, that Huntly and Errol were levying an army in
the north, he marched in person against them, and
without striking a blow, scattered their forces at the
Bridge of Dee. At the end of 1592 a new conspiracy
was brought to light through the seizure on the Clyde
of several letters, and in particular of eight empty
schedules subscribed by Huntly, Errol, and Angus,
which obtained prodigious notoriety as the " Spanish
Blanks." The Catholic Earls had easily compounded for
their first offence, and it was not James's intention to
make them pay heavily for this. Advancing to Aberdeen
at the head of his troops, he 'drove the rebels before him
into the wilds of Caithness ; but their estates, nominally
forfeited, were placed for the most part in the hands of
loyal kinsmen; and at the Parliament of July, 1593,
he refused on one pretext or another to have them
attainted for treason. The Earls now offered to prove
their innocence with regard to the " Spanish Blanks,"
and they were ordered to appear at Perth on October
24. But James cancelled the summons as soon as
he perceived that the Catholics and the Protestants
were preparing to convert the assize into a trial of
strength ; and on November 12 a commission of the
estates gave its assent to the Act of Abolition, by
which the whole proceedings against the Earls were
BATTLE OF GLENLIVAT 253
dropped, and they and all other Papists were required
either to conform or to live abroad on the produce of
their lands.
This Act gave great offence to the Church ; but
Huntly and Errol were as little disposed to accept
the conditions as the clergy to approve them as pro-
portionate to their crimes. In January, 1594, they
were declared to have wilfully deprived themselves of
the benefit of the Act ; and in June, having disobeyed
a summons to enter their persons in ward, they were
condemned by Parliament, attainted and outlawed.
Through the influence of the clergy the Earl of
Argyll, a youth of eighteen, and the brother-in-law of
the slaughtered Moray, obtained a commission to
pursue the King's rebels. Huntly and his friends,
with a force much smaller, but having some field-
pieces and much better drilled, officered, and armed,
encountered Argyll near Glenlivat on October 3,
1594; and after two hours' desperate fighting, they
entirely defeated him, with a loss to the royalists of
some 600 men. King James had reached Dundee
when Argyll himself brought him the news, and
pushing on to Aberdeen, he took an ample revenge.
Huntly and Errol fled, as before, into the wilds of
Caithness ; their castles were sacked and blown up ;
and in the spring of 1595 they were forced, or per-
mitted, to take refuge abroad.
This result appeased for the time being a most bitter
contention between the High Presbyterians and the
King. The evident reluctance of James to extirpate
the enemies of the faith had exasperated these ex-
tremists to the last degree. On the ground that they
had been students for some time in the University
of St. Andrews, the Synod of Fife took upon itself
254 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
to excommunicate the Catholic Earls in September,
1593. In April of the following year a certain John
Ross declared from the pulpit that James was a repro-
bate king, of all men in Scotland " the finest and
most dissembling hypocrite," and that, like his prede-
cessors, he would come to a bloody and untimely
end ; and the Assembly, whilst nominally censuring
him for this monstrous sermon, declared that " there
is just cause of a sharp rebuke, and threatening of
heavier judgments . . . than hath been or might have
been uttered by him." l The chief spokesman of the
High Presbyterians at this period was a man even
more furious and headstrong than Andrew Melville.
John Davidson had been chosen by the Presbytery
of Edinburgh to excommunicate Archbishop Mont-
gomery in 1582. The Duke of Lennox used to call
him " un petit diable " ; he was known at Court as
" a thunderer " during his residence in London with
the Ruthven lords ; and he was cordially detested by
the King, who said on one occasion that "if he knew
there were six of his judgment in the Assembly, he
should not bide in it more than in Sodom or Go-
morrha." 2 On the Sunday following the Parliament
of July, 1593, in which the Papist Earls escaped for-
feiture, Davidson " prayed that the Lord would
compel the King, by his sanctified plagues, to turn
to him ere he perish." 3 The Parliament of June,
1594, not only attainted the Earls, but ordained
" wilful hearers of Mass " to be put to death, and
Papists, who refused to satisfy the presbyteries, to
be summoned before the Council.4 But, when James
intimated these measures to the Presbytery of Edin-
1 Historic of King James the Sext, 318-326 ; Calderwood, v. 300-306, 322.
2 Calderwood, vi. 184. 3 Ibid. v. 256. * Act. Part. iv. 62, 63.
WANING FANATICISM 255
burgh, Davidson said : " One dead, if it were but to
execute Mr. Walter Lindsay for his idolatry, would
do more good than all his letters and the commis-
sioners both." Next Sunday he reminded the people
of Charles IX., who on the eve of the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew had done more for " the good
cause " than James ; and pointing to the King's seat,
he referred to him as " rather vaunting himself
than humbly craving mercy for his sins on his
knees, with tears, as he should have done. " x
Happily, however, there were many within the
Church, to whom such vicious and irresponsible rail-
ing was daily becoming more and more offensive.
The ministers as well as the chief citizens of Edin-
burgh, " miscontent with his rough application," had
long been anxious to get rid of Davidson ; and to
that fiery spirit the coldness and moderation of his
brethren was a continual theme of reproach. In the
Synod of Fife, on the day before it excommunicated
the Catholic Earls, he said " he thought a great
part of the ministry the merriest and carelesest men
in Scotland"; in June, 1594, he inveighed against
"the courses of corrupt ministers," accusing them of
admitting all and sundry to the Holy Sacrament, of
winking at the profanation of the Sabbath, and of
" not faithfully meeting with sin in kirk and country " ;
and Andrew Melville in the previous year had com-
plained " that the ministry was all turned to a kind of
1 Calderwood, v. 337, 338. Davidson and Bruce were supposed to have
inherited the Knoxian gift of prophecy. " Some of the things that they
foretold," says Burnet, " came to pass ; but my father, who knew them
both, told me of many of their predictions that he himself heard them
throw out, which had no effect ; but all these were forgot, and if some
more probable guessings which they delivered as prophecies were accom-
plished, these were much magnified." — History of His Own Time, i. 31.
256 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
politic dealing, arid that he never thought to have
seen such a general defection and coldness in his days. "
It may be well to note here that in all their struggles
with the Crown the High Presbyterians had to deal
with an opponent, the area of whose power and influence
was far wider than theirs. The Scottish Church at this
period was very far from being conterminous with the
Scottish nation ; and there can be little doubt that the
nation stood with the King against the Church, just as
the people of England in after days supported George III.
against the Whigs. In the . chronicles of the time we
find many indications of an effusive loyalty, which,
though by no means discountenanced by the Melville
school, was in strange contrast to its prevailing spirit.
When James, on assuming the government, made his
public entry into Edinburgh in October, 1579, he was
received by the magistrates at the West Port under a
canopy of purple velvet, and by 300 of the principal
citizens in gowns of velvet and silk ; the streets were
strewn with flowers, the houses hung with tapestry and
" painted histories " ; quaint pageants met him at every
turn ; and the City presented him with a cupboard of
plate worth 6000 merks.2 At the birth of Prince Henry,
James's first born, in February, 1594, there was such
rejoicing in all parts — bonfires, festivity, and dancing —
"as if the people had been daft for mirth " ; 3 and we
1 Calderwood, v. 192, 238, 262, 337. In 1595 David Black, of whom we
shall hear immediately, denounced the majority of his brethren as " Pint-
ale ministers, belly-fellows, sycophants, gentlemen ministers, leaders of
the people to hell, and [said] that a great part of them were worthy to be
hanged." He did not deny having used these words. — St Andrews Kirk-
S&feion Record, ii. 815-816, note.
2 Historie of James the Sext, p. 179; Moysie's Memoirs, p. 25 ; Calder-
wood, iii. 458, 459.
3 Moysie's Memoirs, p. 113.
EDINBURGH LOYAL 257
shall see later how the King's escape from a serious
danger evoked a still more extraordinary demonstration.
The High Presbyterians had the support of a large and
zealous minority in all the principal towns ; but even
here the following of Andrew Melville was hardly
greater than that of Knox in the first few years of the
reign. Hume of Godscroft tells us that the courtiers
relied chiefly on the people of Edinburgh, who " took
everything as from the King, whatsoever was com-
manded in his name." When Gowrie's friends had
seized the Castle of Stirling in 1584, and James was
preparing to march against them, the citizens raised a
corps of 500 musketeers ; and such was their reputation
for loyalty that Hume coolly records it as a special
intervention of Providence directed towards the return
of the exiled ministers that some 20,000 of them were
carried off by the plague.1 In the autumn of 1592 the
clergy raised a great commotion in Edinburgh by pro-
hibiting the merchants from resorting to Spain till they
could do so without fear of the Inquisition, and by
having the wool market changed in the interests of
their new Sabbath from Monday to Wednesday. The
merchants promised to obey ,as soon as they had
settled their accounts in Spain ; but the shoemakers
defeated, or helped to defeat, the second scheme by
besetting the ministers' houses, and threatening, unless
the Monday market was restored, to chase them out of
the town. This incident caused much mirth at Holy-
rood, where it was said that " rascals and souters "had
more power over ministers than the King ; 2 and it made
1 Houses of Douglas and Angus, ii. 331, 372. The actual number of the
victims of the plague is probably that given by Birrell — " 1400 and some
odd."— Diary, p. 23.
2 Spottiswoode, ii. p. 432. The author of the Hist, of James the Sext
258 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
a deep impression on Davidson, who said, " I fear more
the multitude and body of Edinburgh to be persecutors
of me and my brethren, and their readiness to concur to
take our lives from us than I fear the Court, unless they
repent." l
Much as James deferred on most occasions to the
Chancellor's advice, his policy towards the Catholic Earls
was entirely his own. Maitland had been driven from
Court through the intrigues of the young Queen in
August, 1592. He was restored to full power in October
of the following year ; but when, at the instigation of the
clergy, he remonstrated against the Act of Abolition, the
King " called him often a beast," and would hear of
no change in the Act.2 Queen Elizabeth was hardly
less earnest than the clergy in exhorting James to more
vigorous measures ; and yet in the interests of the
Scottish Crown he was merely adopting the same line of
policy on which she herself invariably acted in her rela-
tions with foreign Powers. Much to the chagrin of
Lord Burghley, Elizabeth had always shrunk from com-
mitting herself to the defence of Protestantism abroad ;
and James was too conscious of his own weakness to act
vigorously in the same cause at home. He had no
sympathy with the religious persecution which had
driven the Earls to revolt ; he was anxious to wean
them from their dependence on Spain ; and Andrew
Melville accused him with good reason of favouring
says that the Monday market was allowed to continue because it was
found that the majority of the " mercat folks " did not begin the journey
till Monday morning ; but the wrath of the shoemakers may well have
been a contributory cause. It was on this occasion that the rhyme was
circulated against the clergy, which describes them as " wolves clad up in
widow's weeds," and as " prescribing points as scribes in everything." —
Analecta Scotica, ii. 171, and Calderwood, v. 177, note.
1 Calderwood, v. 339. * Ibid. v. 289 ; see also p. 382.
BOTHWELL'S ESCAPADES 259
the Catholics with a view to holding the ministers in
check.
But James had to reckon with a third antagonist in
his audacious cousin, Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell.
This man was a nephew of the Regent Moray ; and it
pleased him for a time to pose as a zealous Presbyterian.
He was one of the Ruthven lords, whom he joined
immediately after the Raid, and apparently the least
obnoxious to the King ; he conferred secretly with
Gowrie's friends at Kelso on their flight to England in
April, 1584; and he was one of the first to join them
on their return. After the execution of Queen Mary he
and Lord Claud Hamilton were the most zealous pro-
moters of an invasion of England ; and in furtherance
of the same scheme he joined the Catholic conspiracy of
1589, which collapsed so ignominiously at the Bridge
of Dee. Bothwell's politics, however, had a strong
personal bias. He utterly detested Maitland ; and his
feeling in this respect was shared by nearly all the high
nobility, in whose eyes the Chancellor, despite his long
descent, was a novus homo — in Bothwell's own phrase,
" a puddock- stool of a night" usurping the place of the
" ancient cedars." l To capture the King, or at all
events to separate him from Maitland, he made so many
wild attempts, and was believed to be planning so many
more, that the Court lived for a time in almost daily
fear. On the night of December 27, 1591, he beset
Holy rood Palace, and was endeavouring with fire and
crowbars to break into the royal apartments, when
the ringing of the town bell warned him to make good
his escape. Six months later, he failed in a similar
attempt at Falkland; but in July, 1593, he appeared
again at Holyrood, and for several hours had the King
1 Calderwood, v. 156.
260 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
at his mercy. In these exploits Bothwell was the self-
constituted champion of the Church, and a source of
attraction to its least reputable members. The notorious
John Colville was his constant companion ; Hunter,
minister of Carnbee, was deposed for deserting his flock
in Both well's service ; John Ross, soon after delivering
his infamous sermon, was apprehended, breechless, and
with plaid and pistols, presumably on his way to join
him ; and another of his followers was Jerome Lindsay,
son of the minister of Leith.1 The Edinburgh clergy
turned him to good account in their sermons as one of
those " sanctified plagues " designed to chastise the
King for his clemency to the Catholic Earls ; they long
refused to excommunicate, or even to denounce him ;
and Bruce, one of their number, declared from the
pulpit that " the Lord Bothwell had taken the protec-
tion of the good cause, at least the pretence thereof, to
the King's shame, because he took not upon him the
quarrel." 2 At last, however, reduced to great extremity
and denied a refuge in England, he was feign to renew
his old alliance with Huntly ; and this step completed
his ruin. In February, 1595, he was excommunicated
by the Presbytery of Edinburgh ; and in April, after
lurking for some time in Caithness, he left Scotland,
never to return.
In October of this year Lord Maitland died. He had
long been the principal bond of union between the
Crown and the Church ; King James wrote his epitaph
in English, and Andrew Melville in Latin ; and his loss,
though compensated for a time through the flight of
both Bothwell and Huntly, was soon to be keenly
felt.
The next year, 1596, has some pretensions to be
1 Calderwood, v. 326, 298, 299. 2 Ibid. 295.
PRESBYTERY AT ITS ZENITH 261
regarded as an annus mirabilis in the history of the
Church. In the preceding December Davidson had
prophesied that the King, the nobles, the clerical
moderates, and the populace would all be severely
punished.1 It was Davidson's own party, however,
which in the zenith of its glory was to be brought low ;
and the King, " the profane ministry," and " the re-
bellious multitude," far from being punished themselves,
were to be the instruments of its fall. " The Kirk of
Scotland," says Calderwood, " was now come to her
perfection and the greatest purity that ever she attained
unto both in doctrine and discipline, so that her beauty
was admirable to foreign Kirks. The assemblies of the
saints were never so glorious nor profitable to every one
of the true members thereof as in the beginning of this
year." 2 These words refer chiefly to the proceedings of
the Assembly which met at Edinburgh on March 24,
1596, and which, on the motion of Davidson, held a
diet of humiliation for the sins of the clergy. On the
O«/
30th 400 persons assembled for this purpose — " all
ministers or choice professors"; and Davidson preached
in such a manner as to make the meeting from his
own point of view a phenomenal success. Such sighs
and groans had not been heard at any fast since the
Reformation, " and tears were shed in such abundance
that the place might justly be called Bochim." 3 The
" profane ministers " — some at least who were after-
wards regarded as such — seem to have viewed these
proceedings with very qualified approval. Pont, the
Moderator, withstood the proposed fast ; Bollock, the
Principal of the University of Edinburgh, refused
pointedly to make the sermon ; and Thomas Buchanan —
Calderwood remarks that he came to a violent end —
1 Calderwood, v. 387. 2 Ibid. 387, 388 ; Scot, p. 65. 3 Scot, p. 66.
262 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
scoffed openly at the preacher's discourse. Diets of
humiliation were appointed to be held throughout the
country ; but though the Synod of Fife set a notable
example, the order was not universally observed.
Meanwhile the quarrel of Church and State was on
the point of breaking out anew. The finances of the
Crown were sadly out of order ; and in the previous year
James had appointed eight Commissioners of the
Exchequer, popularly known as the Octavians, to whom
he granted powers so unlimited in the disposal of the
revenue that he was said to have left nothing to him-
self but the mere title of King. These men, serving
without salary, entered on their functions with the utmost
vigour. They made many enemies by supplanting rival
officials, and cutting down the expenses of the royal
household ; and it greatly aggravated their unpopularity
that the religion of several of them was vehemently
suspected. Much excitement prevailed at this time
both in England and Scotland through the report of
that second Armada, which Howard, Essex, and Raleigh
destroyed soon afterwards in the harbour of Cadiz ; and
James, in view of this new peril, was far from satisfying
the demands of the Church. He refused, as a means of
raising troops, either to seize the estates of the exiles or
to exact payment from those who had become surety for
their good behaviour abroad ; the Countess of Huntly
was continually at Court ; the Earl himself returned
secretly in June ; and in August a Convention of
Estates, on his own petition supported by Lord
Urquhart, the chief of the Octavians, decided that on
certain conditions he should be allowed to remain.
Against this decision the representatives of the Church
protested in vain ; and Andrew Melville, in a private
interview with the King next month, delivered the
THE CHURCH PREPARES FOR WAR 263
most famous of his many speeches on the subject of the
two kingdoms.1
But the clergy were far from being content with mere
protests. On October 20, 1596, the Commissioners of
Assembly despatched a circular letter to all the presby-
teries, warning them that Huntly and Errol, intent on
war and massacre, had obtained license to return,
appointing the first Sunday of December to be observed
as a universal fast, and intimating that a representative
committee would sit permanently at Edinburgh. On
the same day they summoned Lord Urquhart to answer
before the Synod of Lothian for his intrigues in favour
of Huntly. James had suffered much of late from
Andrew Melville's harangues, and these proceedings
quite exhausted his patience. To a deputation of
ministers he said that " Papists might be honest folks
and good friends to him," and that there could be no
peace till the bounds of the two jurisdictions had been
defined. He insisted that they should cease to talk
politics from the pulpit, that the Assembly should neither
convene nor make laws without his consent, and that
synods and presbyteries should confine themselves to a
censorship of morals.2
When these words were reported to the Commis-
sioners on November 11, they accepted them as a
declaration of war against "the liberty of Christ's
kingdom " ; and on the same day they received notice
how the assault was to be made. On the complaint of
Bowes, the English Resident, inspired by James himself,
David Black, minister of St. Andrews, had been cited to
appear before the Council for a sermon, in which he had
said that Elizabeth was an atheist, and the English
religion a mere show directed wholly by the bishops,
1 See p. 218. 2 Calderwood, v. 451-453.
264 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
who had persuaded the King to introduce the same into
Scotland.1 Black had got into trouble the year before
for abusing the King's ancestors ; and Andrew Melville,
who had then defended him on the old theocratic basis,
was still the presiding spirit. On the 18th, the day of
his trial, Black presented a declinature in writing sub-
scribed by all the Commissioners ; and the case was
then adjourned till the last day of the month.
Elizabeth at this period was making common cause
with the Scottish clergy against the Catholic Earls ; and
Bowes, having taken action unwillingly, was easily
persuaded to let the matter drop. Meanwhile, however,
the Commissioners of the Church had taken a very bold
step. They had sent a copy of the declinature to every
presbytery in the realm, requiring all ministers to sign
it, and each copy to be returned by means of a faithful
pastor who might be of use to them in their delibera-
tions. In a short time about 400 signatures are said to
have been obtained.2 This was a direct challenge to
the Government ; and James, " mightily incensed."
replied to it in the most vigorous terms. On the 24th
three proclamations were drawn up, which, after a vain
attempt at compromise, were published, three days
later, at the Market Cross. By these all persons were
prohibited from convening at the desire of the clergy,
the Commissioners were ordered to leave Edinburgh
within twenty-four hours, and Black was summoned to
appear on a new charge.
Black's case was a crucial one for the Court. The
Crown lawyers had been busy collecting evidence
against him, and the articles of the indictment extended
over a period of three years. He was charged, inter
alia, with having said from the pulpit that " all kings
1 Gardiner's History of England, i. 57, note. 2 Scot, p. 72.
BLACK BEFORE THE COUNCIL 265
were devils and come out of devils " ; " that the devil
was the head of the Court and in the Court " ; that the
Lords of Session were "miscreants and bribers," the
Privy Council " holiglasses, cormorants, and men of no
religion " ; and that he prayed " for the Queen merely
for the fashion's sake, seeing no appearance of good in
her time."1 When he appeared on the 30th, Black
presented a second declinature even more extravagant
than the first, in which he referred to the office-bearers
of the Church as "placed in their spiritual ministry
over kings and kingdoms, to plant and pluck up by the
roots, to edify and demolish." 2 To this document, read
over "with post haste" and at once rejected, the
Council replied with an interlocutur, finding themselves
to be judges in the case. A great number of St.
Andrews people were called as witnesses, about twenty-
six of whom deponed that all the charges were true ; 3
and on December 2 — the interval having been spent
in fruitless negotiations — Black was found guilty, and
ordered to await the King's pleasure beyond the
Tay.
These proceedings had been carried on under a
tremendous fusilade from the Edinburgh pulpits ; and
the Court, thus furiously assailed before the people, was
feign at times to sue for mercy. Thus on December 1
we find the King, after a sleepless night, requesting
" that the dint of the doctrine might stay that
day " ; instead of which, " the doctrine passed forward
and sounded mightily " — the brethren having declared
that it " could not be blunted, unless there was an
evident appearance of amending the wrongs." On
1 Moysie, p. 128 ; Spottiswoode, iii. 21. The silence of all the Presby-
terian writers as to the charges is very significant. See p. 256, note.
2Calderwood, v. 478. 3 Moysie, p. 128.
266 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
the 5th James again " craved a truce in the doctrine " ;
and this time the brethren " accorded to the truce and
leaving off the sharpness of application." The King's
proposals on this occasion were as ample as they could
well have been, short of absolute surrender. He offered
to recall the three proclamations of November 27 ,
and as regards the interlocutur, to give a promise in
writing that it should not be used against the Church,
until the whole question had been discussed in a lawful
assembly. On the other hand, he insisted, as due to his
own honour and that of the Queen, that Black should be
at least formally punished. But the clergy, standing to
the unlawfulness of the entire process, would not hear
of any penalty, no matter how light ; and so, breaking
off the conference, they betook themselves once more
to " that spiritual armour which was given them, potent
in God for overthrowing these bulwarks and mounts
erected for the sacking of the Lord's Jerusalem."1
James in much less figurative language ordered Black
to retire beyond the North Water and the Commis-
sioners once more to leave Edinburgh — an order which
they did not venture to disobey.2
The quarrel had thus reached a critical stage, when
through certain intrigues at Court it was brought to a
sudden and very dramatic issue. The Cubiculars or
lords of the Bed Chamber, who had suffered most from
the new regime of retrenchment and reform, were
anxious to discredit it by some popular outbreak. For
this purpose they played a double game, and they
played it with considerable skill. They filled the
ministers or their friends with such fear of the Octavians
as Papists and enemies to the Church that a watch was
set nightly round their houses ; to the Octavians they
1 Scot, p. 79. 2 Calderwood, v. 483-498.
RIOT AT EDINBURGH 267
represented the watchers as lying in wait to take their
lives ; and when, in consequence of such reports,
twenty -four of the most zealous burgesses were ordered
to leave the town, they told the ministers that this had
been done at the instigation of Huntly, who. they
falsely alleged, had been with the King at Holyrood
the previous night.1
These intrigues succeeded admirably. On the morn-
ing of Friday, December 17, Balcanquhal assailed
the Octavians from the pulpit in the most violent
terms ; amongst the audience were several nobles and
lairds ; and, alluding to the zeal of their fathers in
defence of the Congregation, he exhorted them to
convene after service in the Little or East Church of
St. Giles. When the ministers came to the church,
they found it so crowded that they could hardly obtain
entrance. Bruce made an impassioned speech, at the
close of which the people swore with uplifted hands to
stand fast in defence of the faith ; and a deputation
was then despatched to lay their grievances before the
King. James received the deputation in the Upper
Tolbooth ; and their address being somewhat unman-
nerly, he left them without giving an answer, and went
down to the lower house. Meanwhile, in the East
Church the people had been listening to the story of
Haman and Mordecai; on the return of the baffled envoys
there was more clamour and gesticulation in token of
their " covenant with the Lord " ; and at this moment
" a messenger of Satan," and, doubtless also the Cubicu-
lars, came to the door and shouted, " Save yourselves,
there is a tumult in the gate." At these words the whole
assemblage rushed out of the church ; friends, hastily
armed, flocked to them from the neighbouring houses ;
1 Calderwood, v. 510-511.
268 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
and in a few moments the streets were filled with an
excited mob, some shouting, " The sword of the Lord
and of Gideon," and others, at the doors of the
Tolbooth, " Bring forth the wicked Haman." Before
this, " some devilish officious person," probably another
agent of the Cubiculars, had told James that the
ministers were coming to take his life ; and when the
tumult arose, the craftsmen hearing and seeing so many
" choice professors " in arms, turned out in a body in
defence of the King. Led by a sturdy blacksmith,
John Watt, deacon of deacons, or, in modern phrase,
Convener of the Trades, they formed a guard round the
Tolbooth ; and when James, in response to their cries,
appeared at a window, they " offered to die all in one
moment for his Majesty." But a riot so aimless and
incoherent could not last long. The Provost, without
much difficulty, persuaded the people to disperse ; and
soon after noon, in the midst of the loyal craftsmen,
James returned in safety to Holyrood.1
The ministers had done their best to pacify the
tumult ; but their subsequent conduct showed clearly
that they did not perceive how great an advantage it
had given to the King. About five in the evening they
sent a deputation to Holyrood, which either failed to
gain admission or did not venture to seek it, requiring
not only the recall of everything done to the prejudice
of the Church during the last five weeks, but also that
an Act of Council should be made approving the action
of the clergy and their lay associates in the course of
that day. Early next morning the Court withdrew to
Linlithgow, and a proclamation was published at the
Cross ordering all strangers to leave Edinburgh, the
pp. 83-85; Calderwood, v. 511-513, 561-563; Spottiswoode, iii.
27-30 ; Birrel's Diary, pp. 39-40 ; Moysie, pp. 130-131.
VIOLENCE OF THE ZEALOTS 269
Lords of Session and other judges to be in readiness to
depart, and the nobles and lairds not to convene without
the King's license. But the High Presbyterians
remained defiant and undismayed. On Saturday they
wrote a letter to Lord Hamilton, exhorting him to put
himself at their head ; and Hamilton, returning the
original, sent a copy altered for the worse — whether with
or without his knowledge — to the King. Sunday was
observed as a public fast ; and John Welsh from the
pulpit of St. Giles declared that King James was
possessed with a devil, and that, one being removed,
seven worse devils had entered in. Welsh was a son-
in-law of Knox ; and he advocated resistance by
adducing Knox's famous parallel of the children laying
hands on an insane father.1 On Monday, hearing that
a warrant had been issued for their arrest, the four
ministers of Edinburgh fled from the town.
The clergy had thus played directly into the hands of
the King, whose object it was to represent the riot in
such a light as would justify an attack on the privileges
of the Church. With this view he affected to be
vehemently incensed against the whole town ; even the
valiant John Watt, coming with three others to plead
for his fellow-citizens, was dismissed with threats ; the
1 Spottiswoode, iii. 34 ; Forbes' Records (Wodrow edition), p. 405, John
"Welsh, " a man altogether apostolic, of rare both learning and piety," as
Baillie calls him, was not only a prophet, but a worker of miracles. Oil
one occasion at supper, when " a debauched Popish young gentleman "
had interrupted his edifying discourse by laughing and making faces, he
charged " the company to be silent and observe the work of the Lord
upon that profane mocker," who immediately " sank down and died
beneath the table." One of his friends once " saw clearly a strange light
surround him " ; and he restored a youth who was supposed to have been
dead for forty-eight hours. — Select Biographies (Wodrow Society), i. 12,
29, 35, 36. Bruce also was something of a thaumaturgist ; but it is very
doubtful whether either of them had that reputation in his own day.
270 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
Court of Session sat at Leith under orders to remove
in a few weeks to Perth ; and when James entered
Edinburgh on January 1, 1597, a large force of
Borderers was posted in the streets. The appearance of
these troops, or rather the report of their coming,
created such consternation that the booths were closed,
and both merchants and craftsmen, taking their goods
with them, shut themselves up fully armed in some of
the strongest houses.1 At length, at the price of 30,000
merks, the town succeeded in making its peace with the
King. On March 22 the agreement was proclaimed ;
and next day, amidst much music and bell-ringing,
James drank to the magistrates, and the magistrates
to him. In January of this year, to his own great
loss, he dismissed the Octavians, or rather permitted
them to resign.
Edinburgh had thus been punished vicariously for the
sins of the Church ; and this policy was well calculated
to strengthen the reaction which was growing stronger
every day against the High Presbyterian party. In
truth, the disturbance of December 17 had far more
influence on the relative position of parties within the
Church itself than on the policy of the King. James
had previously decided on vigorous measures ; for, six
days before the riot, the Commissioners of the Church
received notice that missives had been prepared for the
calling of a Convention of Estates and a General
Assembly to resolve all points at issue between the
Church and the Crown.2 But the riot, which merely
coincided with the designs of the King, was a blow, and
a fatal one, to his opponents. The extremists were
driven from power ; and the moderate party, supported
by the Crown on the one side and by the nation on the
1 Birrel's Diary, p. 41 ; Melville's Diary, p. 253. 2 Scot, p. 79.
LORD MENMUIR 271
other, mounted at once into an ascendency, which re-
mained unbroken, and not even seriously challenged, for
forty years.
The new epoch was to be one of peace and order, of
widening intelligence and a serener spirit ; and in this
respect it was worthily inaugurated by the brilliant
statesman, who had succeeded Haitian d in the confidence
of the King. John Lindsay, second son of the ninth
Earl of Crawford, and ancestor of the Earls of Crawford
and Balcarres, had been admitted a Lord of Session, with
the title of Lord Menmuir, in 1581, and a Privy Coun-
cillor in 1589. In 1595 he was appointed one of the
eight Lords of Exchequer ; and in the following year he
became Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and Secretary of
State. It was he who drafted the Acts of 1587, which
secured to the representatives of the lairds or lesser
barons that right of admission to Parliament which the
whole order had asserted in 1560 ; and in 1596 he drew
up an elaborate scheme, known as the " Constant Platt,"
and described by James Melville as " the best and most
exact that ever was devised," 1 for providing all the
churches in Scotland with perpetual local stipends. Lord
Menmuir's abilities were acknowledged on all hands to
be of the highest order. He excelled both as a legislator
and as a lawyer ; he was reputed the ablest financier of
his time ; his knowledge of mineralogy procured for him
the office of Master of the Metals ; and he was the
inventor of a contrivance, patented in 1600, for raising
water from mines. Spottiswoode describes him as "a
man of exquisite learning and a sound judgment " ; 2 and
Melville as " for natural judgment and learning the
greatest light of the policy and counsel of Scotland." 3
An accomplished Greek and Latin scholar, with a
1 Diary, p. 229. 2 History, iii. 77. 3 Diary, p. 290.
272 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
partiality for Plato, he wrote with ease in French,
Italian, and Spanish ; much of his leisure was given to gar-
dening, architecture, music and poetry ; and his library
at Balcarres, including the collection of state papers pre-
sented to the Faculty of Advocates in 1712, is sufficient
evidence of his historical and antiquarian tastes.1
We have seen that James, some time before the riot at
Edinburgh, had resolved to come to an understanding
with the Church ; and Lord Menmuir, with a view to
exposing the worst abuses, had drawn up a list of fifty-
five questions, for the discussion of which an Assembly
was appointed to be held at Perth on February 29,
1597. These questions — many of them conceived in
a vein of Socratic irony — included such as the fol-
lowing : — Whether the external government of the
Church may be disputed, salva fide et religione ;
whether, except for notorious vices previously rebuked
in private, a minister may denounce men by name from
the pulpit ; whether a minister may use further applica-
tion than is necessary for his own flock, or whether the
whole world is the flock of every particular pastor ;
whether a minister is bound by his text, or may speak
all things on all texts ; whether summary excommunica-
tion is lawful in any case ; whether the civil magis-
trates may intervene to stay proceedings in Church
courts to the prejudice of the State.
As soon as the questions were published, the Synod
of Fife proceeded to answer them in the true theo-
cratic style ; and perhaps the Assembly might have
adopted the same tone, if care had not been taken
to regulate both its composition and its zeal. As
few ministers could afford to travel far, the character
of each Assembly depended a good deal on its
1 Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays, i. 375-377, et passim.
THEOCRACY RENOUNCED 273
place of meeting ; and the Government had selected
Perth in the hope of seeing the High Churchmen
of the south outnumbered and outvoted by their ruder
colleagues. Sir Patrick Murray, one of the Cubiculars,
was despatched beforehand to proselytise in the King's
interest ; and when the Assembly met, James trod so
skilfully in the steps of that "apostle of the north"
that he won over all the northern ministers, and not
a few of the southern ones also. It was debated first
of all whether they should regard themselves as a
lawful General Assembly, the last Assembly having
appointed another to meet at St. Andrews in April.
James Melville, arguing in the negative, bade fair to
carry his point ; but the question was decided against
him mainly through the influence of Nicolson, his
bosom friend and an old opponent of the Court, who
had been closeted with the King on the previous
night. After long discussion, the Assembly returned
a submissive answer to such of Lord Menmuir's queries
as were proposed to them by the King — including all
those mentioned above except the last, which was
deferred with the others to further reasoning. It was
also agreed that in all the principal towns no minister
should be admitted without the consent of the King
and the congregation. The theocratic ideal, which
had been dominant in the Church since the days of
Knox, was thus practically abjured. Certain commis-
sioners were appointed to deal with Huntly, Errol,
and Angus, the three Catholic Earls, whose return had
been the cause of the late commotion ; and these commis-
sioners having reported favourably to the Assembly
wrhich met in May at Dundee, the Earls were formally
received next month into the society of the Church.1
1 Melville's Diary , pp. 264-266 ; Calderwood, v. 06-622.
S
274 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
In this Dundee Assembly l it was resolved that pres-
byteries should not meddle with anything not con-
fessedly belonging to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
and also that, where the King took exception to pro-
ceedings in presbyteries as prejudicial to the State or
to private rights, such proceedings should be suspended
during the royal pleasure. Even more memorable
than these two important Acts was the commission
granted to fourteen ministers, or to any seven of that
number, to confer with the King with a view to the
planting of certain churches and the carrying out of
Lord Menmuir's " Constant Platt," and generally to
advise the King on all matters affecting the weal of
the Church and the maintenance of the royal authority.
Such commissions, or commissions very similar, had
been regularly appointed since that of 1594 described
by Row in the light of subsequent events as " the first
evident and seen wrack of our Kirk."2 But the
former commissions had breathed the High Pres-
byterian spirit ; and during the late conflict, when
the Commissioners of Assembly were acting as the
Church's council of war, James had fulminated pro-
clamations against them, as authorised to consult
only, and not to exercise jurisdiction. It was this
very power, however, that he wanted for the com-
mission of this year. With the exception of James
Melville and one or two others, its members were
all favourable to the new order of things — so much
1 During this Assembly the King had a stormy interview with Andrew
Melville. The King, says James Melville, " began to deal very fairly
with my uncle, but thereafter entering to twitch matters, Mr. Andrew
broke out with his wonted humour of freedom and zeal, and there they
heckled on till all the house and close both heard, mikle of a large hour.
In end the King takes up and dismisses him favourably." — Diary, p. 273.
2 History, p. 162.
PROPOSED CLERICAL REPRESENTATION 275
so that Calderwood denounces them as " the King's
led horse," and Scot as "a wedge taken out of the
Kirk to rend her with her own forces " ; and James,
conceding something in form to the theory of the
two kingdoms, proposed to exercise through these
men that supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which
had hitherto been exercised, at the cost of so much
friction, by the Privy Council.1 Of their willingness to
undertake this function, which was formally assigned to
them in the next Assembly, the Commissioners soon
gave proof by removing Black from St. Andrews,
and by suspending his colleague, Robert Wallace,
who had railed against Lord Menmuir in the style
now happily going out of fashion ; and at the end
of the year they still further gratified the King by
presenting a petition that the Church as the first
estate 2 should be admitted to have voice in Parliament.
Decisive as were the results which attended this peti-
tion, there was nothing at all novel in the petition itself.
We have seen that in the last days of the Catholic
hierarchy most of the abbacies and priories had passed
in all but name into the hands of laymen. After the
Reformation, the abuses of the old Church coinciding
with the democratic character of the new, it seemed
probable that all the great benefices, including the
bishoprics,3 would be converted into temporal lordships ;
1 Spottiswoode, iii. 63.
2 The Church was the first estate, and the bishops are so called in the
Act of 1662 restoring prelacy ; but it is worthy of notice that in the
pamphlets of this period the clergy are invariably called the third estate,
perhaps because they were the only one of the three that had fallen into
abeyance.
3 In 1567 Bishop Gordon of Galloway resigned the see in favour of his
son John ; and this resignation not taking effect, another son, George,
succeeded to the bishopric on his father's death. — Grub, ii. 200.
276 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
and it was to avert this result that Knox and his
colleagues had consented to the restoration of Episcopacy
in 1572. But the new hierarchy was soon repudiated
by the Church, and ultimately, as a mode of ecclesias-
tical government, by the civil power ; laymen, without
any commission from the Church, continued, in right of
their titles, to sit and vote in Parliament as the first
estate; and in the very Parliament of 1592, which
established Presbyterianism, as in subsequent Parlia-
ments, we find, as Lords of the Articles pro clero,
various bishops, abbots, and priors.
To remedy so anomalous a state of things certain
proposals were made. In 1592 the Assembly protested,
as it had done in 1589, that the pseudo-ecclesiastics
should no longer be permitted to vote in name of the
Church ; and in the ensuing Parliament the clergy
vainly petitioned that this privilege should be trans-
ferred to them.1 It was laid down by Lord Menmuir in
his " Constant Platt " that the whole tithes of the realm
should henceforth be assigned to the support of the
ministry ; and as this would leave nothing for the
prelacies — the temporalities having been previously
annexed to the Crown — he proposed that commissioners
should be sent from the presbyteries sufficient with the
prelates to make up the first estate, and when the pre-
lates had died out, to constitute the whole. By this
means he hoped to strengthen that counterpoise to the
power of the great nobles, the creation of which had
been the object of his Acts of 1587 in favour of the
smaller gentry. But the nobles, who had violently
opposed the former scheme, were equally hostile to this ;
and the petition of the Commissioners was granted only
in terms which entirely altered its scope. In December,
1 Bowes to Burghley, June 6, 1592, quoted by Mr. Gardiner, i. 67.
REPRESENTATIVES TO BE PRELATES 277
1597, an Act was passed that such ministers as the
King should please to appoint to bishoprics or other
prelacies should be admitted to Parliament, that all
bishoprics should henceforth be granted only to actual
preachers, and that the authority to be exercised by the
new prelates within the Church should be determined
by the King with the advice of the Assembly, without
prejudice meanwhile to the established discipline.1 Thus,
whilst Lord Menmuir had aimed at a popular represen-
tation of the clergy, Parliament would admit only a
spiritual aristocracy appointed by the Crown to keep the
clergy in check. Such an answer to their petition ex-
posed the Commissioners to the charge of having
betrayed the Presbyterian system ; and it was thought
at the time, and afterwards asserted by the Commis-
sioners themselves, that the Estates hoped to secure the
rejection of their offer by making it in so unpalatable
a form.2 In the Synod of Fife the two Melvilles insisted
that presbyters as such would never be admitted to
Parliament. " Equo ne credite, Teucri," said David
Ferguson, one of the original ministers of the Church ;
and Davidson " said merrily, ' Busk, busk, busk him as
bonnily as ye can and bring him in as fairly as ye will,
we see him well enough ; we see the horns of his mitre.' " 3
In spite, however, of its practical rejection by Parlia-
ment, the Commissioners adhered to their original plan ;
and an Assembly to consider the whole matter was held
at Dundee in March, 1598. In this Assembly James
protested that he meant not to bring in " Papistical or
Anglican bishops," but merely to give the clergy such
weight in Parliament as would enable them to secure
their own interests ; and on this and all similar occasions
1 Calderwood, v. 669-670. 2 Scot, p. 98.
3 Melville's Diary, p. 289 ; Calderwood, v. 680, 681.
278 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
the necessity of obtaining an adequate provision for the
ministry was the great argument in favour of the
scheme. The north country ministers mustered in full
strength ; James did not scruple either to solicit votes
in private or to intervene in the debates ; and at last,
led by one whom Melville calls "a drunken Orkney
ass,"1 the Assembly decided by a majority of ten that
fifty-one representatives should be chosen to vote for the
Church in Parliament. The details were to be adjusted
in a Convention composed of three delegates from each
synod and six university doctors ; and in such a Con-
vention held at Falkland in July it was agreed that the
representatives of the Church should be selected by the
King out of a leet of six nominated by the Assembly
for each vacancy ; and amongst other restrictions, that
they were to be responsible to the Assembly, were to
propose nothing either to Council or Parliament without
its consent, and in rank and function were to remain
ordinary pastors.
Except as regards the number of representatives, in
which the decision of the Estates was necessarily final,
this plan had almost nothing in common with that
which had been approved by Parliament ; and James
had to reconcile the two as he best could. In spite of
his old predilection for Episcopacy, it is probable that
he had honestly resolved to make trial of Lord Men-
muir's popular first estate;2 but Parliament had refused
to consider this scheme, and it had never been intended
either by Lord Menmuir or himself that the Church's
representatives should be the mere delegates of the
Assembly. In the autumn of this year, owing to an
evil report of its contents, he was forced to publish his
Basilicon Doron ; and in view of what Melville calls the
1 Diary , p. 291. 2 Lord Menmuir died on September 3 of this year, 1598.
COMMISSIONERS, NOT PRELATES 279
" Anglopiscopapistical conclusions" of that work, the
friends of Presbytery had some reason to tremble for its
fate. James, however, still hoped that the decision of
the Assembly might be manipulated in such a way as to
satisfy both himself and the great lords. In November,
1599, in a conference at Holy rood supplementary to
that of Falkland, it was debated whether the representa-
tives of the Church should be elected for life and
whether they should be called bishops. When the
Melville party refused to give way on either of these
points, James told them sharply that he could not
dispense with one of his estates, and if the Church
would not gratify him, he would have recourse to in-
dividuals who would do their duty to him and the country.1
In March, 1600, the Assembly met ?,t Montrose, for
which this conference had been intended, vainly enough,
to prepare the way. James took a keen interest in the
debates ; and he received the clergy in so many private
audiences that the courtiers complained that they could
not obtain access.2 But enough had happened between
this Assembly and the last to create serious alarm ; and
the schemes of the Court made little progress. Not only
were all the Falkland restrictions or 'caveats' confirmed,
but two more were added — the Church's representatives
were to be called Commissioners, not Bishops, — and it
was carried by a majority of three that they were to be
annually elected. Through his influence, it is said,3
with the Clerk, James contrived to have this last
resolution so far altered that the representative was
required merely to submit his commission every year
to the Assembly to be continued or withdrawn as the
Assembly, with the King's consent, should think good.
" Thus," says Calderwood, " the Trojan horse, the
iCalderwood, v. 761. 2Scot, p. 113. 3 Ibid. p. 114.
280 CHURCH AN13 STATE, 1586-1603
Episcopacy, was brought in, busked and covered with
caveats, that the danger and deformity might not be
seen." l In reality, however, the decision of the
Assembly was a defeat for the King ; 2 and James
practically admitted this by having recourse to the
alternative with which he had threatened his opponents
at Holy rood. In October, 1600, in a convention of
delegates from the various synods, he nominated three
of the Commissioners to the sees of Caithness, Ross,
and Aberdeen ; and the new bishops sat and voted in
Parliament next month.
On August 5 of this year occurred the memorable
incident at Gowrie House. Whatever may be the true
explanation of that strange affair — whether it was that
Gowrie and Ruthven had conspired to kidnap the King
and carry him off by boat to Fast Castle, or that James
had provoked Ruthven by referring to his intimacy
with the Queen, or that Ruthven, as James himself
suspected, was really insane — the fate of the two
brothers is hardly more certain historically than that
Ruthven had sealed the fate of both by violently
assaulting the King. But Gowrie, the friend of Beza,
a young man "of great expectation and much respected
by the professors"3 was dear to the High Presbyterian
remnant both for his father's sake and his own ; and
when the ministers of Edinburgh were required to give
thanks for the King's escape, they refused to do so in
terms implying Ruthven 's guilt. When they were
1 Calderwood, vi. 20.
2 " The whole of the labours and intrigues of the last three years had
been thrown away, and James had done nothing more than he might
have done immediately upon the passing of the Act of Parliament in
1597." — Gardiner, i. 77. Mr. Gardiner's is practically the only modern
account of these transactions, and, needless to say, a most excellent one.
3 Calderwood, vi. 27.
A LOYAL DEMONSTRATION 281
referred to James's own letter, Bruce said coolly that
they could not read the letter and doubt of its truth ;
and a little later, he had the assurance to ask the King
whether he had a design to slay Gowrie and his brother.1
Except for some uproar at Perth, of which town Gowrie
had been Provost, these suspicions were vehemently
repudiated by the nation at large. It was nearly eight
o'clock on a dark and rainy evening before James could
get clear of the town ; but he had not ridden four miles
towards Falkland when he was eagerly welcomed by
crowds of his loyal subjects both on horse and foot. At
Edinburgh, next day, after Lindsay, the King's favourite
minister, had preached to a great multitude from the
Cross, " the people with discovered heads praised God";
the bells were rung ; the thunder of the Castle guns was
echoed from the ships at Leith ; and the whole town
resounded with the rattle of musketry, with blowing of
trumpets and beating of drums. When night fell,
bonfires blazed on every hill, far and near, on both
sides of the Forth ; in Edinburgh every house was
illuminated; and the townspeople testified their joy "in
sic manner the like was never seen in Scotland, there
was sic dancing and merriness all the night."2
When James created his three bishops, two months
later, he repudiated the system established with his
own approval in the last Assembly ; and the extra-
ordinary enthusiasm of this loyal demonstration may
have emboldened him to take so decisive a step. But
such an encouragement was hardly needed. For three
years the Commissioners had wielded almost the whole
1 Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, ii. 308.
2 Birrel's Diary ; Calderwood, vi. 46. When James landed at Leith on
August 11, he was received with a salvo of cannon and musketry "as if
he had been new born." — Calderwood, vii. 50.
282 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
power of the Church ; and to the majority of the
Commissioners the decision of the Assembly was hardly
less distasteful than to James himself. At Dundee in
1598 Rollock had " said plainly that lordship could not
be denied to them that were to sit in Parliament and
allowance of rent to maintain their dignities " ; 1 and
eight of Bollock's colleagues were so much of his
opinion that they suffered the episcopal estate to be
restored in their own persons. James had won over
the Synodal Convention by promising to recall the Act
of Annexation ; but this Convention had no authority
to act in name of the Church, and the new bishops were
not recognised by the Church at all. Yet so powerful
had the royal influence now become that two years later
we find the Assembly giving up its own scheme of
parliamentary representation, and adopting that of the
King. The Assembly of 1602 resolved that ministers
should be appointed to all the prelacies ; and it expressly
endorsed the action of the Convention by choosing
certain brethren " to be adjoined" to those previously
nominated, out of whom the King might fill up the
vacant bishoprics.2 Nothing more was wanted to com-
1 Calderwood, v. 697.
2 Calderwood, vi, 179. Mr. Gardiner seems to have overlooked this Act
when he speaks of the King appointing new bishops "without the
slightest pretence of conforming to the mode of election prescribed by
the Assembly." — i. 305. The whole subject is very perplexing ; but it
seems to me that when the Assembly approved the action of the King in
the Synodal Convention, it distinctly abandoned the mode of election
which it had formerly prescribed. In that case, however, the 'caveats'
would have fallen to the ground, whereas in this very Assembly of 1602
they were admitted to be still in force. — Calderwood, vi. 176. The truth
perhaps was that neither the King nor the Assembly cared to admit that
their joint labours had been as fruitless as in fact they were ; and thus
they sought to represent as one two schemes of representation which
were entirely distinct. This seems to be the design of Spottiswoode, who>
after mentioning all the provisions laid down by the Montrose Assembly
SERVICES OF THE MELVILLE PARTY 283
plete the triumph of the State, which had not only
defeated and disarmed its rival, but in these protracted
negotiations had succeeded at last in dictating its own
terms of peace. As the prelates had no functions
assigned to them in the government of the Church, the
Presbyterian system still remained intact ; but we shall
see in the next chapter how the Crown, having prevailed
upon the Church to accept bishops, used them to
deprive it of its internal freedom.
Andrew Melville had thus lived to see his spiritual
kingdom overrun and conquered by the State ; but he
and his friends had worthily acquitted themselves in a
higher sphere than that of ecclesiastical politics. His
own services to education were great and enduring. At
Kilrenny, in Fife, his nephew built a manse almost
entirely at his own expense, bought up the teinds as an
endowment for the parish, and paid the salary of the
schoolmaster out of his own stipend. Black distin-
guished himself by his zeal in building churches and
providing for the poor ; and Howieson, one of the three
ministers who compared the King to Jeroboam, endowed
a school at Cambuslang. But none of Melville's col-
leagues acted so nobly in this respect as John Davidson.
At Prestonpans, where he settled after leaving Edin-
burgh, he served for many years without salary, he
built at his own expense a handsome church, a manse,
a school, and a house for the master, to furnish a stipend
for whom he bequeathed all his movable property,
including a large collection of books ; and it appears
from his will that, when death overtook him, he had
as to the election of representatives, says coolly : " And now there rested
no more but to nominate 'persons to the bishoprics that were void." — iii. 82.
If no more 'rested,' why did James procure the assent of the Convention,
and why did Gladstanes and Blackburn apologise to the local courts for
having accepted the bishoprics ?
284 CHURCH AND STATE, 1586-1603
resolved to sell his whole patrimony, and devote the
proceeds to the support of the church and ministry of
the parish.1
Whatever may be thought of the principles of the
Melville school, these deeds speak for them trumpet-
tongued ; and assuredly there was much of value for
the future in their teaching as well as in their noble
lives. It has happened to Melville, as to others of
greater name, that what he himself prized most in his
work has proved to be of far the least permanent value.
The whole question of Church government was sub-
ordinate in his eyes to his design of making the Bible as
interpreted by the clergy the supreme law of the land.
And yet, whilst his spiritual empire fell to pieces in his
own day and was restored by his successors only to
write its own condemnation in practice, the Presbyterian
framework, on which this superstructure was raised, has
defied all efforts to uproot it from his age to ours.
Melville was as happily illogical as Knox ; and as
Knox's protest against authority has proved the most
powerful solvent of his own iron-bound creed, so the
theocracy of Melville was really incompatible with his
idea and Knox's of an unpriestly Church. There could
not, permanently at least, be two kingdoms, so long as
men involved in the business of the State were per-
mitted as lay elders to wield authority in the Church.
It is to this fearless openness of Presbytery that we
must attribute its masculine spirit and its rude but
vigorous intellectual life ; and the time has not yet
come when we can afford to forget the protest of
Melville's party that the Church cannot be an estate in
Parliament, since it includes, not the clergy only, but
the whole body of the people.
1 M'Crie's Life of Andrew Melville*
CHAPTER IX.
BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625.
AT the beginning of the seventeenth century the temper
of the Scottish Church and its relations with the State
pointed unmistakably to a change in its system of
government ; and in order to appreciate this movement,
it will be necessary to glance briefly at the origin and
progress of Episcopacy in Scotland.
Although in strictness the Reformed Church as
organised by Knox was neither Episcopal nor Presby-
terian, it approximated far more nearly to the latter
type than to the former. It is true that the superin-
tendent discharged many of the functions of a bishop,
whilst the weekly exercise for " prophesying," or inter-
preting the Scriptures, gave little promise of the
presbytery — a form which it did not begin to assume
till 1581, and which is not expressly assigned to it even
in the Second Book of Discipline. But there was no
reason in the nature of things why the deliberative
meeting should not become an ecclesiastical court ,
whereas the bishop and the superintendent, despite
their external resemblance, were as far apart as a
priestly and a non-priestly church. The office of the
superintendent was meant only to be temporary ; he
286 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
was subject both to the trial of the Assembly and to the
censure of his own Synod ; he possessed no exclusive
power of ordination ; he was ordained by ordinary
ministers ; and he himself was not necessarily, or even
invariably, a minister at all. x It has been mentioned
incidentally, however, that Episcopacy of the political,
not the canonical, kind was introduced in 1572 ; and
the circumstances which gave rise to this change are
worthy of more particular attention.
In 1561 it had been decided that the Catholic
prelates should retain two-thirds of their revenues for
life ; and the nobles held so large a stake in the patri-
mony of the Church that this arrangement witnesses
rather to their greed than to their moderation. Ten
years after the Reformation, the old ecclesiastics were
rapidly dying out ; and it became a question what was
to be done with their vast estates. In August, 1591,
an Act was passed that all lands held in feu or heritage
of priors and superiors of convents should henceforth be
held of the Crown2 — such Crown lands being always
open to become the property of those who could obtain
the royal favour ; and it seemed at first as if the
bishoprics were to pass into the hands of the nobles by
a much less circuitous method. In 1570 the Earl of
Glencairn had been much offended because the Regent
Lennox would not give him the archbishopric of Glas-
gow, the revenues of which he already enjoyed in the
shape of an annual pension ; and on the execution of the
Primate Hamilton, in April. 1571, Lennox had bestowed
his archbishopric on the Earl of Morton. Even in the
worst days of the old hierarchy, however, laymen,
1 Bishop Maxwell admits that the Superintendents " resembled more
Arch-Presbyters than Bishops." — The Burthen oflssachar, p. 34.
*ActParl. Hi. 59.
STATE-MADE BISHOPS 287
though they might become abbots and priors, had never
become bishops ; and the Parliament of 1571, with an
eye to the validity of its own Acts, appointed certain of
the clergy to fill up the gap in the spiritual estate. One
of these was John Douglas, whom Morton had already
presented to the see of St. Andrews, and to some small
part of its revenues ; and the other — for there seem to
have been only two — was John Porterfield, who voted
as Archbishop of Glasgow.1 The Church was naturally
indignant with the civil power for thus confiscating a
large part of her patrimony and appointing nominees of
its own to preside over the rest. The Superintendent
of Fife forbade Douglas to vote till he had been admitted
by the Church, under pain of excommunication, and
Morton commanded him to vote under pain of treason.
The Commissioners of the Assembly protested in Parlia-
ment that benefices should be given only to qualified
persons, whose qualifications had been tried by the
Church ; and Erskine of Dun, the Superintendent of
Angus, in an indignant letter to the Regent Mar, re-
minded him of the fate of King Jeroboam, who had
presumed to make priests in his realm.2
Out of this dispute there could be only one issue.
Neither party was at all anxious for the erection of
bishops — the nobles because they wished to appropriate
the revenues of the sees, and the clergy because, for the
most part, they looked with suspicion on the episcopal
office. But it was not the wish of the nobles, especially
during the minority of the King, that one of the three
Estates should become even partially extinct ; and
1 Botfield's Original Letters of the Reign of James VI., i. xi. xii. James
Paton had been made Bishop of Dunkeld, but seems not to have voted in
the Stirling Parliament of 1571.
2Bannatyne's Memorials, pp. 178, 183, 186, 199.
288 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
much as the bulk of the clergy disliked bishops, they
disliked sacrilegious laymen still more. A settlement
was arrived at between six members of the Government
and six leading churchmen at Leith in January, 1572.
The Church agreed to recognise, not only bishops, but
abbots and priors — these last being eligible for seats
both in Parliament and in the Court of Session ; and
the State conceded that all persons presented to such
prelacies should be admitted by the Church, and that
" all feus, rentals, or tacks," to the prejudice of spiritual
livings, should henceforth be null and void.1 The
jurisdiction of the new episcopate was no greater and
no more mysterious in origin than that of the super-
intendents;2 and by some at least of the clergy the
innovation was cordially approved. Erskine of Dun, as
Calderwood sorrowfully admits, "could not well
distinguish betwixt a bishop and a superintendent " ;
and in his letter to the Regent he even speaks of bishops
as " the order which God hath appointed in his
Kirk." 3
1 Mr. Gardiner is thus mistaken in saying that " the Bishops were to be
duly consecrated ... in order that they might have some legal title to
hand over the greater part of their revenues to the nobles, to whom they
owed their sees." — i. 46. Whatever legal title the bishops may have had
to act thus before the Concordat of Leith, they had none thereafter.
2 " It was, as far as human power could make it, an Episcopacy, but it
wanted the " life divine " which is communicated through the unbroken
chain of the Apostolical Succession. It was like the chiselled marble as
compared with the living man ; it bore a striking resemblance, but there
was wanting the principle of vitality which fills the form with warmth,
and lights up every feature with vivacity." — Bishop Sage's Presbytery
Examined (Spottiswoode edition), p. 254, note. If the Spottiswoode
Society had refrained from editing its reprints, we should have had a
graver, but apparently not a poorer, world.
3 A good account of the Leith Concordat is given in Cook's History of
the Church of Scotland. — i. 158-190 ; also in Cunningham's History, i.
422-431.
"TULCHAN BISHOPS" 289
At the time of the Leith Concordat John Knox had
less than a year to live ; and his attitude towards the
scheme was no doubt that of the Church at large.
Though he did not conceal his repugnance to the new
polity, he was so far from repudiating it that he was
anxious chiefly that the Church should make the most
of its bargain ; and with this view he sent certain
articles to the Assembly of August, 1572, in one of
which he urged his brethren to petition the Regent that
all vacant bishoprics should be filled up within a year by
qualified persons, according to the terms of the late
agreement.1 Knox's consent to Episcopacy was a
sacrifice, not of principle indeed, but of inclination ;
and it was a sacrifice the more galling that it seemed
to have been made in vain. For the State never ful-
filled its obligations to the Church. Within a few
months Lord Methven had obtained a grant of the
bishopric of Ross ; Morton, to Knox's great indignation,
held Archbishop Douglas to his nefarious compact ; and
simony soon became so general and so notorious that
the new bishops were popularly known as "tulchan
bishops," in allusion to the practice of setting up stuffed
calf-skins or tulchans before cows to make them
yield their milk more freely. It has justly been
observed, however, that this " milking " of the prelacies
neither began nor ended with the new hierarchy
— the Concordat of Leith being no more respon-
sible for such abuses than that it failed to prevent
them.2
The tulchan scandals were so discreditable to the
episcopate that it might have been expected to succumb
much more easily than it did to the assaults of Andrew
Melville. Melville returned to Scotland in July, 1574 ;
1 Bannatyne, p. 261. 2 Grub, ii. 226.
T
290 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
and though by his own account he began at once to
make war on the bishops, Episcopacy was not
finally condemned by the Assembly till July, 1580.
The Church was doubtless reluctant to face a conflict
with the statute law and the likelihood of losing what
remained of its patrimony ; for, soon after Melville's
triumph, as might easily have been foreseen, the
temporalities of the bishoprics were annexed to the
Crown.
The Church had now receded from its compact with
the State ; and we have seen how the Duke of Lennox
brought the two powers into conflict by presenting his
pensioner, Kobert Montgomery, to the archbishopric of
Glasgow. In this, the first of its pitched battles, Epis-
copacy was singularly unfortunate in its champion.
According to Spottiswoode, Montgomery had been so
.zealous against the bishops that on one occasion he
would have had the Assembly censure those who had
spoken in their favour ; l Scot describes him as " a stolid
ass and arrogant ; 2 and his bargain with Lennox was
the worst and the most notorious of all the tulchan
scandals. The Assembly sought to evade the real ques-
tion at issue by accusing Montgomery of errors in
doctrine ; but as he denied the charges and few of them
were proved, the articles presented against him throw
more light on the tenets of the Melville school than on
his own. Of the sixteen articles, three were these : that
he called " the matters of discipline and lawful calling in
the kirk," " trifles of policy " ; that " he condemned the
application of Scripture to the particular manners and
corruptions of men, mockingly asking in what Scripture
they may find a bishop for a thousand pounds, horse-
corn and poultry " ; and that " he oppugned the doctrine
1 History, ii. 281. 2 Apolegetical Narration, p. 49.
ARCHBISHOP ADAMSON 291
of Christ, who pronounceth that the most part are
rebellious and perish."1
The Montgomery affair proved to be little more than
an episode in the Catholic conspiracy of Lennox ; and as
such it ended, triumphantly enough for the Church, in
the Raid of Ruthven. But the Presbyterians had now
to deal with a more formidable opponent. Patrick
Adam son was one of the most accomplished clergymen
of the day — an eloquent preacher, a poet and a lawyer
as well as a divine, and inferior in learning to Andrew
Melville alone. In 1576 he succeeded Douglas as
Archbishop of St. Andrews ; and when he was required
to receive the office at the hands of the Assembly, he
pointedly refused. It was he who was chiefly respon-
sible, after Arran, for the " Black Acts" of 1584 ; and
these Acts he defended in an extremely able pamphlet —
polished, temperate, vigorous, and terse, which attracted
much attention in England, where it was reprinted and
embodied in the second edition of Holinshed's Chronicles.
To this tract there were two replies — one by Andrew
Melville and another in the form of a dialogue by James.
Of all the extremists James Melville had the reputation
of being the gentlest and most moderate in practice ;
but he had none of his uncle's massive force, and his
wild and hysterical pamphlets are the best possible
commentary on the reaction, which was already setting
in against the ultra-Presbyterian party. In his dialogue
he rails against Adamson as " a juggler, a Holliglass, a
drunkard, a vile Epicurean " ; and in 1586, when Adam-
son published an appeal to the King against his
excommunication by the Synod of Fife, he replied in
language, of which the following may serve as a speci-
men : "Thy wicked doings, 0 malicious calumniator,
1 Calderwood, iii, 579-580.
292 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
and lewd life being laid open in thy own face, the
filthiness of thy shame discovered, and thy festered galls
and sores rubbed and pricked with the piercing and
biting oil of the Word of God, thou kicked and flang
with all thy force against the leech, and could not wile
a better stroke than to allege that the rebuker and
shower thee of thy vice had spoken against the King
and his law." In the career of Adamson the Episcopacy
of the future, both in its strength and in its weakness, is
plainly foreshadowed. In a fanatical age he was a man
of culture as opposed to undigested learning ; and James
Melville urges as the most absurd of all his errors that
he advocated liberty of conscience.1 On the other hand,
he was wholly dependent on the support of the Crown ;
and he it was who initiated that close correspondence
between the English and the Scottish Church, which
ultimately proved so disastrous to the latter.
Adamson died in June, 1591, in great misery and
want ; for the King, availing himself of the recent
Act of Annexation, had bestowed his liferent on the
young Duke of Lennox, and his opponents had ex-
torted from him a humiliating retractation. James
sacrificed Adamson to his new understanding with
the Church, the groundwork of which had been laid
when the bulk of the clergy, headed by Craig, sub-
scribed the Acts of 1584; which had been fostered
by the Armada in its twofold object of conversion
and conquest ; and which culminated, just a year
after Adamson's death, in the famous statute, which,
though it left intact the political status of the bishops,
transferred to the presbyteries their episcopal jurisdic-
tion. But this accord, as we have seen, was of short
duration. The anti-Spanish feeling, which the Crown
1 Calderwood, iv. 538.
GROWTH OF MODERATISM 293
in its own interest had first fostered and then sought
to restrain, soon passed beyond its control ; the Act
of Abolition in favour of the Catholic Earls aroused
the most vehement discontent ; and thus in 1596 James
was opposed once more, and for the last time, by a
united Church. Even at this crisis, however, the
Moderates showed enough of their spirit to be em-
ployed as the chief agents of communication with the
Court ; according to Spottiswoode, they were strongly
in favour of accepting the King's offer to give up the
process against Black, if the Church would give up
its declinature ; l and after the tumult of the 17th
December, which probably disgusted them as much
as it alarmed the King, they acquiesced at once in
the victory of the State.
The difference between these men and their col-
leagues— between the " wiser sort " of Spottiswoode
and the " sincerer sort " of Calderwood — was a
difference rather of temperament than of principle ;
for one might approve in general of Melville's aims,
and yet cordially dislike his methods. On the Sunday
after the riot Bruce complained bitterly from the pulpit
of the faint-heartedness of so many of his brethren, who
in their lack of zeal — their fine learning and unsancti-
fied graces — were "the wrack of the Kirk."2 To the
Dundee Assembly of 1598 Patrick Galloway, one of
the reclaimed zealots, preached a sermon, " exhorting
to a confused peace, without due distinction between
peace in God and peace in the devil " ; 3 and in certain
most instructive articles penned, if not composed,
1 History, iii. 19. The future Archbishop is said to have been particu-
larly active in obtaining subscriptions to the declinature ; but this state-
ment must be read in the light of the admission that " he was the only
suspected or known Judas among the ministry at that time." — Scot, p. 72.
2 Calderwood, v. 518, 519. 3 Ibid. p. 683.
294 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
by Davidson, the Assembly was petitioned to make an
Act against a " curious kind of preaching, yea, rather a
certain unprofitable and profane Kevo<p(avia, without the
right cutting of the Word, which of a long time has
been unprofitably used by many, and by their example
beginneth now to be more excessively used of more to
the great hindrance of true edification, wherethrough
the people . . . under a shadow of religion are enter-
tained in atheism without all true knowledge and
feeling" — this novel style of preaching being quite
opposed to the old, which stood " rather in the evidence
of the Spirit," " not in the wisdom of men, but in the
power of God." l
As Maitland's controversy with Knox as to the law-
fulness of the Queen's Mass was the beginning of the
quarrel between Church and State, so indirectly, in the
spirit of the combatants, it foreshadowed the two types
of character which were to compete for the mastery
in the Church's life. We have seen, however, that
between Knox and Maitland there was a conflict of
aim, aggravated, indeed, by extreme personal antagonism,
but necessarily as great as that between the Reforma-
tion and the Reformed Church. Maitland, in fact,
subordinated his religion to his country ; and it was not
till the Church had been rudely awakened from its
theocratic illusions that a section of the clergy were pre-
pared, in the interest of religion, to assume the same
attitude towards the Knoxians that Maitland, as a
secular statesman, had assumed towards Knox.
The names of three fathers of the Church are specially
associated with the growth of this moderate movement.
Knox's colleague, John Craig, died in 1600 at the great
age of eighty-eight. Originally a Dominican friar, he
1 Calderwood, v. 704.
CRAIG AND ERSKINE 295
had seen much of life in many lands, and, like Adamson,
he was a lawyer as well as a divine. In the civil wars
at the outset of the reign he had shown little sympathy
with either side, comparing the state of the Church to
that of the Jews, who were oppressed sometimes by the
Assyrians and sometimes by the Egyptians ; l and
nothing does him greater credit than his opposition to
the Act of Assembly against praying for the Queen.
The zealots of that day complained that he " swayed
over much to the sword-hand " ; 2 but, though he lived
to confute several of his own opinions, his inconsistency
seems to have proceeded rather from weariness of strife
than from want of courage. In 1564, in controversy
with Haitian d, he maintained that princes, who fail to
keep faith with their subjects, may justly be deposed;3
on several occasions he sternly rebuked the King ; and
at the crisis of 1584 he defied Arran to his face. Yet
in the end he not only took the lead in subscribing the
" Black Acts," but declared from the pulpit that kings,
even bad kings, are responsible to God alone.
Erskine of Dun, who had seconded Craig in urging
submission to the Acts, died eight years before him, in
1592. Both his father and his grandfather had fallen
at Flodden, where Craig's father had also fallen ; and he
himself had fought gallantly against England, and
subsequently against France. A party to the first
Protestant ' Band ' or Covenant, he had adopted the
new opinions long before the preaching of Wishart ; he
was a generous patron of learning ; and it was under
his auspices that Greek was first taught in Scotland at
Montrose in 1534. Queen Mary referred to him as " a
mild and sweet natured man with true honesty and
1 Calderwood, iii. 75-76. 2 Bannatyne, p. 253.
J Knox, Works, ii. 458.
296 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
uprightness," and Knox as "a man of meek and gentle
spirit." He contributed more than any other Church-
man to bring about the Concordat of Leith ; and though
himself merely a lay superintendent, we have seen that
he held very exalted ideas of the episcopal office.
Erskine did not live long enough, or rather was born
too early, to exchange his formal Presbyterianism for
diocesan Episcopacy ; and it was reserved for David
Lindsay, whose public life coincides with the first half-
century of the Reformed Church, to illustrate the
transition in his own person. Lindsay's name appears
as one of the original ministers at the first Assembly of
1560. It was he who carried Knox's dying message of
doom to Kirkcaldy of Grange ; l and it is characteristic
of the man that he "thought the message hard."
Associated with Craig and Erskine in negotiating the
Concordat of Leith and in submission to the Acts of
1584, he was more of an Episcopalian than Craig and
less so than Erskine. He was one of the three prelates
nominated in 1600; he was consecrated with the other
bishops in 1610 ; and he died, over eighty, in 1613.
As "the minister whom the Court liked best,"3 Lindsay
was an object of some suspicion to the zealots ; and
several amusing encounters are recorded between him
and Davidson. Thus in 1593, at a meeting presided
over by Lindsay during the excitement caused by the
"Spanish Blanks," Davidson offered to preach next day,
preparatory to a public fast, " which Mr. David Lindsay
1 "Go, I pray you, and tell him that I have sent yon to him yet once,
to warn him ; and bid him, in the name of God, leave that evil cause,
and give over that castle. If not, he shall be brought down over the
walls of it with shame, and hang against the sun. So God hath assured
me." Knox's followers took care that this prophecy should not fall to
the ground.
J Melville's Diary, p. 34. 3 Calderwood, iv. 63.
PRESBYTERY DISCREDITED 297
hearing, would not hear, but praised God " ; and a few
weeks later, just before the Act of Abolition, when
Lindsay had hurried over an evasive message from the
King, and " would have been at the prayer," Davidson
said hotly, " If this Assembly did their duty ... ye
should be put in the coal-house, for not urging our articles
and returning such shifting and trifling toys to us." l
Of the eight commissioners who had represented the
Church at the Convention of Leith, one other survived
the century in the person of Knox's son-in-law, Robert
Pont, minister of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, and a Lord
of Session. Pont had always attached more importance
to the prerogative of the Church than to its form of
government ; 2 and though now accounted one of " the
chief plotters of Episcopacy," 3 he was more loyal than
Lindsay to the principles of 1572. The King in 1600
offered him the bishopric of Orkney, as he had offered
him that of Caithness thirteen years before ; and in
neither case, to his honour, would he accept the benefice
without the Assembly's consent.
To such men as Lindsay and Pont Presbytery may
never have been more than a defensible innovation ;
and even amongst those who had known no other
system, there were many who had waxed cold in its
support, chiefly, no doubt, because it had become the
standard of revolt against the civil power, but also
because it conflicted with their aspirations towards a
1 Calderwood, v. 277, 283.
2 "There is a judgment above yours," said Pont on one occasion to the
King, " and that is God's, put in the hand of the ministry ; for we shall
judge the angels, sayeth the Apostle." — Calderwood, v. 131. In 1586,
when James had made many good promises to the Assembly, Pont said,
" Sir, we praise God that your Majesty, being a Christian prince, has
decored our Assembly with your own presence ; we trust your Majesty
speaketh without hypocrisy." — Ibid. iv. 548-549.
3 Scot, p. 115.
298 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
new ideal both of faith and conduct. The "fine
counterfoots " denounced by Bruce, who owed more to
profane culture than to the Spirit of Grace, could
hardly admit that prelacy was to be condemned merely
because it was the invention of man ; l and they felt in-
stinctively that peace and freedom were to be enjoyed
under a form of government advocated simply as the
most expedient rather than under one which claimed to
exist by divine right. Episcopacy, moreover, at this
period, received a great impetus from the accession of
King James to the English Crown ; and before we
resume the narrative where we left it at the close of
the last chapter, it may be well to review briefly the
previous relations of the English and Scottish Churches.
From the political point of view the Scottish Re-
formation could not have culminated more appropriately
than in conformity with England. Except during the
reign of Mary Tudor, when it was protected for dynastic
reasons by the Queen Regent, Protestantism in Scot-
land had been dependent on English support ; it had
flourished and decayed with the party of the English
alliance ; and in the struggle with France it had been
kept alive by English money, and established ultimately
by English arms. It soon appeared, however, that the
two movements thus politically conjoined were by no
means the same. At the outset of the troubles the
Reformers had used the Prayer-Book of Edward VI. ;
but the conclusion of the war found the more zealous of
them in no very complaisant mood. According to
Bishop Leslie, there was no mention of religion in the
Treaty of Edinburgh, because Elizabeth's commissioners
1 " That a lordly ministry is a lee (being a mere invention of man, who
is a leer) I need not to prove." — Anonymous pamphlet of 1599 ; Calder-
wood, v. 764. This was always the great argument of the Melville party.
THE TWO CHURCHES 299
had failed to prevail upon the Scots to accept the
English model ; l and Randolph toiled in vain to the
same purpose during the sitting of the Reformation
Parliament. On the other hand, Maitland asked Cecil
to let him know if he objected to anything in the Con-
fession, that, if possible, it might be qualified or
changed ; 2 and Morton at a later time made it a chief
object of his dealings with the Church to conform it to
English ideas. For the origin of the religious strife we
must probably go back to the famous quarrel at Frankfort
in 1556 between Knox and the future Bishop of Ely, Dr.
Cox, as to the use of the English Prayer -Book ; for
whilst Knox ruled supreme in the Scottish Church, the
Cox party, to the prejudice of Knox's old associates, had
their own way in England. We have seen how Knox
in 1562 struck the first blow by wantonly attacking the
Anglican " cross and candle." Three years later, when
the order was issued for the use of the surplice, Moray
and Maitland wrote to Leicester, urging him to labour for
its recall ; 3 and in December, 1566, at the desire of the
Assembly, Knox penned a letter to the bishops and
pastors of England, entreating them not "to trouble
the godly for such vanities " -— " suirclothes, corner-cap,
and tippet . . . the dregs of that Romish beast." *
So far, however, the two Churches had much in
common ; for the superintendent in Scotland was no
bad apology for a bishop, and in England most of the
sees were filled by the Marian exiles, whose Protes-
tantism had a strong Calvinistic bias. " The Scots,"
writes Bishop Parkhurst to Bullinger in August, 1560,
"have made greater progress in true religion in a few
months than we have done in many years." Bishop
1 Histor-y, p. 292. 2 Foreign Calendar, 1560-1561,No.523.
^Foreign C'afettcfar,1564-1565,No.l042. * Calderwood, ii. 333.
300 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
Jewel, writing to the same correspondent in 1562,
speaks of religion as " daily making progress in that
•country" ;l and so late as 1581 we find Archbishop
Orindal licensing a Presbyterian divine, " called to the
ministry by the imposition of hands, according to the
laudable form and rite of the Reformed Church of
Scotland."2 Knox's English colleagues, Goodman
and Willock, both re-entered the English Church,
when their work in Scotland was done ; and Knox
himself sent his two sons to be educated at Cam-
bridge, the younger of whom died Vicar of Clacton-
Magna in 1591.
It is somewhat remarkable that the divine right of
Episcopacy was never asserted in England till Bancroft
preached his famous sermon at Paul's Cross in 1589,3
eleven years after the Scottish Church had affirmed the
divine right of Presbytery in the Second Book of
Discipline ; and by that time enough had happened to
-embitter the antagonism thus sharply defined. The
Melville party believed that the "Black Acts" had
been hatched in England, from a visit to which country
the Primate had returned only a week or two before the
Parliament met. In London Adamson was well re-
ceived by the bishops, to whom he presented certain
articles containing an abstract of the Scottish Discipline,
with his own strictures thereon ; and his reception con-
trasts very favourably with that of the Presbyterian
refugees next year. The Bishop of London, after some
slight experience of their oratory, forbade Balcanquhal
and Davidson to preach ; and when the exiles craved
the favour of a separate place of worship, the request
was refused. In his sermon at Paul's Cross Bancroft
1 Grub, ii. 253. 2Strype's Life of Grindal, b. vi., c. 13.
3 Neal's History of the Puritans (edition 1754), i. 331.
THE TWO CHURCHES 301
inveighed against Knox and the Scottish Church,,
referring chiefly to Adamson's defence of the anti-
Presbyterian Acts and to a work of Lord Burghley's-
relative, Robert Brown, the father of the Independents,,
who had come to Edinburgh in 1584, and had been
" committed to ward a night or two" 1 till his opinions
were tried. Bancroft was greatly blamed in Scotland
for having had recourse to such " infamous witnesses" ;
but the wrath of the clergy was not at all appeased when
they discovered next year that he had applied for further
information to John Norton, an English stationer in
Edinburgh. A reply to the sermon was published by
Davidson ; and from this period the Melville party
hardly even affected to keep terms with the sister
Church. The Assembly of March, 1590, required
ministers to remember the persecuted Puritans in their
prayers, both public and private ; in the Assembly of
the following August James Melville, the retiring
Moderator, declaimed against " these Amaziahs, the
belly-god bishops in England," who " by all moyen and
money were seeking conformity of our Kirk with
theirs " ; and one of the causes of a fast appointed by
the Synod of Fife in 1593 was "the hot persecution of
discipline by the tyranny of Bishops in our neighbour
land."2 As early as 1587 we hear of Udall, one of
the Marprelate pamphleteers, as being present in the
Assembly ; two years later, he preached before the
King in St. Giles' ; and it was from Scotland, where
as an Anabaptist he resided in no great favour for three
years, that his colleague Penry waged much of his
paper war against the bishops.
In April, 1604, about a year after his accession to
the English Crown, James told the House of Commons
1 Calderwood, v. 6. 2 Ibid, pp. 88, 100, 265.
302 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
that he hoped to leave at his death " one worship of
God, one kingdom entirely governed, one unformity of
law " ; l but neither of the two expedients he adopted
towards this end had any immediate success. The
Hampton Court Conference only widened the gulf
between the Puritans and the Church. When Gal-
loway's report of the conference, corrected by James
himself, had been read in the Presbytery of Edin-
burgh, James Melville warned his brethren to " watch
and take heed that no peril or contagion come from
our neighbour Kirk " ; 2 and the Scottish Parliament,
in appointing a commission to treat for union, enacted
that the commissioners should have no power to do
anything to the prejudice of " the religion presently
professed in Scotland." 3 The union project, after it
had been put into shape by the commissioners of the two
countries, was resisted and ultimately thrown aside by
the English Parliament, when it found that James,
contrary to its wishes, had obtained a decision at
common law that persons born in Scotland after the
union of the crowns — the postnati, as they were called
— were ipso facto naturalised in England. But this
decision realised part, and no unimportant part, of the
proposed union.
At the date of King James's accession to the
English Crown the Church of Scotland was as
thoroughly Presbyterian in form as in 1592, the only
difference being that certain of the ministers, in addi-
tion to their pastoral duties, had been admitted to
have voice in Parliament. The ruling power resided
not in these so-called bishops, who had no episcopal
jurisdiction, but in the Commissioners of the Assembly
— " the Bischoprie Commissioners," as Forbes calls
1 Gardiner, i. 176. 2 Calderwood, vi. 247. 3 Act. Parl. iv. 264.
THE CROWN AND THE ASSEMBLY 303
them1 — whose duty it was to advise the King in all
things ecclesiastical, to maintain peace and concord
between the Crown and the Church, and in particular,
to take order with regard to "any enormity" of
which the King might complain in the conduct of the
clergy. Representative as it was, this Commission
never failed to maintain its character as " the King's
led horse," for, with the exception of the two Mel-
villes, Davidson, and Bruce, the moderate party now
included all the leading men in the Church ; but, as
every Assembly meant the appointment of a new
Commission, it greatly concerned the King to main-
tain his influence in the Assembly, and with that view
to fix at pleasure its time and place of meeting.
Thus the Assembly, which was to have met at Aber-
deen in July, 1599, was appointed by royal proclama-
tion to meet at Montrose in March, 1600; in 1601,
the Assembly fixed for July at St. Andrews was
anticipated by the King at Burntisland in May ; and
the Assembly of 1602 was postponed from July to
November, and its place of meeting changed from St.
Andrews to the King's own chapel at Holy rood. In
thus asserting the royal authority at the expense of the
Church James violated, or at all events suspended, the
Act of 1592, which provided that an Assembly should
be held every year, or oftener, at the time and place ap-
pointed by the King or his Commissioner in the last
Assembly, or in their absence by the Assembly itself;
and in the meeting at Holyrood in 1602 he agreed
that this Act should be observed in future. Nevertheless,
the next Assembly, appointed to meet at Aberdeen in
July, 1604, was prorogued to July, 1605, before which
date it was prorogued again — this time indefinitely ;
1 Records, p. 417.
304 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
and it appears from one of his letters that James
had resolved to dispense with Assemblies altogether.1
The Melville party, or what remained of it, had now
some reason to be alarmed ; for, if the Assembly did not
meet on the day fixed, the right to summon such a court
would pass wholly from the Church to the Crown. The
Presbytery of St. Andrews had sent three ministers to
Aberdeen in July, 1604; and nineteen ministers, followed
by nine others who endorsed the proceedings in which
they arrived too late to take part, convened there on
July 22, 1605. John Forbes, one of the ministers, had
an understanding with the Chancellor, Lord Dunfermline,
that they would be allowed to meet, if they did no more
in their Assembly than merely prorogue it to another
day ; and the letter from the Council presented by
Straiton of Lauriston, the King's Commissioner, being
addressed, "To our Traist Friends, the Brethren of
the Ministry convened at their Assembly in Aberdeen,"
they resolved to constitute themselves an Assembly
before they opened it.2 The letter, however, proved to
be an order to dissolve at once without appointing any
new meeting ; and when the ministers insisted on ad-
journing to the first Tuesday of September, Straiton,
who had hitherto made no opposition and had even
suggested Forbes as Moderator, protested that he had
never acknowledged them to be a lawful Assembly,
and charged them to disperse on pain of treason.
He and his friends realised too late that the
holding of this Assembly might extinguish the
Commission appointed by the last ; and the Council
1 Gardiner, i. 303.
2 The action of the Council, and especially of the Chancellor, is the
more surprising, because in the previous October a proclamation had
been issued forbidding the ministers to convene without the King's
express warrant. — Balfour's Annals, ii. 2.
THE ABERDEEN ASSEMBLY 305
were easily persuaded to accept his story, contrary as
it was to their own instructions, that he had prohibited
the Assembly by open proclamation on the previous
day.
For refusing to condemn their proceedings at Aber-
deen six of the ministers, including Forbes and Knox's
son-in-law, John Welsh, were imprisoned in Blackness
Castle. Of the whole number, one was released at the
request of the Earl of Morton ; four were not summoned
at all ; and about a third, through the exertions of
David Lindsay, were brought to pronounce the Assembly
illegal. The rest, fourteen in number, were cited before*
the Council on October 24 ; and as they would con-
sent to plead only after presenting a written protest
that they did not recognise the jurisdiction of the court,
it was determined in January, 1606, to bring the six
Blackness prisoners to trial under the statute of 1584,
which had been passed in consequence of Melville's declin-
ature, but which had not been enforced against Black,
with the whole Church behind him, in 1596. That it
should be enforced now against a handful of brave men,
the last devoted champions of a ruined cause, was felt on
all hands to be cruelly and scandalously unjust; and at the
close of the proceedings at Linlithgow James was assured
by the Crown lawyers that but for his own exertions
the prosecution would certainly have failed.1 The Earl
of Dunbar, formerly one of the Cubiculars, had been sent
down from Court to overawe the judges, to pack the
jury, and to fill the town with his friends and retainers.
But the prisoners were ably defended by their counsel ;
Forbes and Welsh both made eloquent speeches ; and
after the jury had been coaxed and worried by Dunbar
for more than six hours, nine only out of fifteen, and
ifiotfield's Original Letters, i. 31-33.
U
306 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
these his " private kinsmen and friends " could be
brought to convict the accused ; and of the minority,
one said boldly in open court that he took them for
" honest ministers, faithful servants to Christ, and good
subjects."1 All the ministers might easily have purchased
their pardon by withdrawing their declinature; but this
they resolutely refused to do. In October, 1606, the
Blackness prisoners were banished for life ; and the other
eight, whom the Crown dared not bring to trial, were
sent to the Hebrides, Caithness, and Ireland.2
By such questionable means James got rid of fourteen
formidable opponents ; and in August of this year he
had disposed of eight more, including the two Melvilles,
by calling them up to London to confer with him and
their brethren on the state of the Church. Andrew
Melville was never to see Scotland again. For an
epigram on the Anglican service, written merely for his
own amusement, he was summoned before the Council ;
and conducting himself there with something more than
his usual vehemence, he was committed to the Tower.
After an imprisonment of four years he was permitted to
retire to France; and he died at Sedan in 1622. His
nephew had predeceased him at Berwick in 1614.
Meanwhile, in accordance with the Act of the Assembly
of 1602, James had filled up all the vacant bishoprics.
1 Scot, p. 155.
2 For the Aberdeen Assembly and its results, see the account given by
John Forbes, the Moderator, in his Records touching the Estate of the
Church, pp. 383-558, the documents printed in Calderwood, vol. vi., and
Botfield's Original Letters. Burton's reference to this Assembly is an
extraordinary example of his careless habit of writing. — v. 433. There
are at least five errors in as many lines. On page 436 of the same volume
he entirely misapplies a letter of the Presbytery of Edinburgh to the
King. — Nov. 15, 1608, Botfield's Original Letters, i. 166. The Presbytery
does not congratulate the King on his proceedings against the Melville
party, as Burton supposes, but on his proceedings against the Papists.
BISHOPS' LANDS RESTORED 307
In July, 1603, Spottiswoode, David Lindsay's son-in-law,
was made Archbishop of Glasgow ; soon afterwards
Gladstanes was translated from Caithness to St. Andrews ;
and occupants were found for the sees of Caithness,
Orkney, the Isles, Galloway, and Moray. The events of
1605, as well as his experience of the English hierarchy,
must have quickened James's desire to establish a more
permanent government in the Church than that of
Commissioners whose authority lasted only from one
Assembly to another ; but in order to restore the
jurisdiction of the bishops it was necessary, or at least
advisable to restore their estates, and to that there was
likely to be considerable opposition. The nobles had
already become jealous of the new prelates. It was
supposed to have been from this motive that the
Chancellor had encouraged Forbes to hold the Assembly
at Aberdeen — a fact which was speedily made known to
the King by Archbishop Spottiswoode, and afterwards
in self-defence by Forbes himself; and others of the
Council, especially Lord Balmerino, President of the
Session, were suspected of being unfriendly to the
bishops.1 At the opening of the Parliament held
at Perth on July 9, 1606, ten bishops rode in pro-
cession between the earls and the barons ; but on the
last day they went on foot, because their old place
was denied them between the marquises and the earls ;
and the legislation of the Parliament wTas quite in
keeping with this rivalry between the temporal and the
spiritual peers. The Act of Annexation, so far as it
affected bishoprics, was repealed, and the estate of
bishops was restored " as the same was in the reformed
kirk" at any time before the Act of 1587.2 On the
1 Forbes' Records, p. 426 ; Spottiswoode, iii. 204-205.
*Act. Part. iv. 281-284.
308 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
other hand, the nobles were expressly confirmed in all
that they had obtained from the Crown under that Act
to the prejudice of the Church ; and seventeen prelacies
were erected in their favour into temporal lordships.1
The sacrifice may have been inevitable, but it was
humiliating both for the Church and for the King.
When James gained the assent of the Synodal Con-
vention to the appointment of the three bishops in
1600, he had promised, not only to recall the Act of
Annexation, but, far from making new temporal
lordships, to cancel those already made.2
Although the bishops possessed no episcopal juris-
diction, something had already been done to bring them
informally into working relations with the Church. In
the Holy rood Assembly of 1602 two of them had been
appointed Commissioners for Visitation within their
respective bounds ; all of them exercised great influence
through being employed to modify the stipends of the
clergy ; and before the end of the year another cautious
step had been taken in the same direction. At
Linlithgow in December, 1606, there was a Convention,
afterwards styled an Assembly, of s^me thirty lay
magnates and 130 ministers nominated by the Crown
to take order with Papists and the dissensions in
the Church. On the proposal of the King's Com-
missioner, skilfully seconded by the Earl of Dunbar, it
was agreed that every presbytery should have a
" Constant Moderator," who should co-operate with the
Council in the suppression of Popery, and in reward of
1 There were twelve erections and five confirmations of royal grants.
Amongst the abbacies and priories " erected " at this time were
those of Arbroath, Scone, Holyrood, Dryburgh, and Cambuskenneth, St.
Andrews, Jedburgh, and Coldingham. — Act. Parl. iv. 321-361.
2 Original Letters, i. xvii.; Nicolson to Sir Robert Cecil, October 19,
1600.
CONSTANT MODERATORS 309
his labours, unless he were a bishop, receive a pension
from the Crown. The bishops were to preside in the
synods as well as in the presbyteries within which they
lived ; and the Convention took upon itself to nominate
Constant Moderators, episcopal and ministerial, to all
the presbyteries in Scotland. The presbyteries without
much difficulty were induced to submit ; but in all the
synods, except that of Angus, where Erskine's influence
long survived him, the superiority of the bishops was
strenuously opposed — the more so as it was believed
that nothing had been concluded on this head at
Linlithgow, and that the Act, in so far as it affected the
synods, had been arbitrarily extended by the King.1
Many of the Commissioners of Assembly had now
become bishops, and as all the bishops were also
Commissioners, much of the authority denied them in
the former capacity was permitted to them in the
latter. As Commissioners their authority ought to
have expired with the meeting at Linlithgow, if that
was an Assembly, as it was now declared to have
been ; but since they had not been discharged, they
claimed to hold office till the next Assembly, which
after several prorogations was finally held at Linlith-
gow in July, 1608. Whatever means the Commis-
sioners may have used to influence the elections, such
as modifying stipends and exercising the power of
visitation granted to them in 1602, the Assembly
from their point of view was a signal success. The
general Commission was renewed in identical terms
and to almost the same persons — eleven out of the
1 Calderwood, vi. 615, 622-624 ; Scot, pp. 179-194 ; Eow, p. 244. James
Melville's True Narration of the Declining Age of the Kirk of Scotland, which
continues his record of ecclesiastical affairs from 1601 to 1610, is appended
to the Wodrow edition of his Diary.
310 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
thirty Commissioners being bishops, and these eleven
sufficient of themselves to constitute a quorum. When
James Melville heard of this, he wrote to a friend
"that either God must change the King's heart or
the government of the Kirk would be overturned " ;
and the King was so much pleased that he told
Spottiswoode that, if he had been present himself in
the Assembly, he could not have done better. About
a year later, in June, 1609, the bishops were restored
by Act of Parliament to their ancient jurisdiction in
testamentary, matrimonial, and all spiritual causes ;
in February, 1610, two courts of High Commission on
the English model were established by royal procla-
mation— one in each archbishopric ; and in an Assembly
held at Glasgow in the following June the authority
of the Commissioner was finally merged in that of
the diocesan bishop. This meeting had no pretensions
to be a free General Assembly, for the 138 ministers
elected by the various presbyteries had all been
nominated by the King through the Archbishop of
St. Andrews, or in other words, by the Archbishop
himself; and a large number of laymen were present
without commission from either presbytery or synod.
Sir James Balfour asserts that at the first Linlith-
gow Assembly of 1606 Dunbar, the Lord Treasurer,
spent 40,000 merks in the purchase of votes ; l and
corruption, under colour of money given for travel-
ling expenses, is said to have been practised on a
large scale at Glasgow, where there were many
ministers from the far north " who had never seen
the face of a General Assembly." Calderwood has
some reason to bewail what he calls " the conclusions
of that corrupt crew." All presentations were hence-
1 Annals, ii. 18.
EPISCOPACY ESTABLISHED 311
forth to be directed to the bishop of the diocese,
who in concurrence with certain local ministers of
his own choosing was authorised to ordain, suspend,
and depose ; no sentence of excommunication or
absolution was to be pronounced without his consent ;
he was to preside as moderator in the diocesan
synod, and every minister at his admission was to
swear obedience to the King and his Ordinary. On
the other hand, the bishop was to be subject to the
censure of the Assembly, by which, with the King's
consent, he might be deprived ; and this Act was
violated in spirit, if not in letter, when in the
October following three of the bishops received
episcopal consecration hi England, and on their
return consecrated the rest.1 In October, 1612, the
Acts of the Glasgow Assembly were ratified by
Parliament in a manner extremely favourable to the
bishops, and the Act of 1592 was repealed.
On the face of it, this was a much less spontaneous
revolution than that which had resulted in the
triumph of Presbytery under Andrew Melville ; for the
welcome accorded to the new system amongst the King's
" own northern men," as Gladstanes called them,
especially in Angus, was far outweighed by its un-
popularity in the more advanced and more populous
districts south of the Tay. Yet both revolutions
would seem to have been the work of a minority
utilising, and ultimately outstripping, the tendencies of
the time. Andrew Melville was recognised as Knox's
1 Calderwood, vii. 94-107. Before the ceremony in the chapel of London
House, Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Ely, urged that the Scottish prelates must
first be ordained presbyters, as they had never received episcopal ordina-
tion ; and though this objection was overruled by Archbishop Bancroft,
it is admitted by most modern Episcopalians to have been perfectly valid,
and was acted upon at the second consecration in 1661.
312 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
successor by a Church which had been committed by
Knox to a struggle for supremacy with the State ;
but it is doubtful whether the Second Book of Dis-
cipline did not as far exceed the Church's eagerness
for war as the Episcopacy of 1610 exceeded what
it was willing to sacrifice for peace. After the
defeat of 1584, the great majority of the ministers
submitted to the civil power ; and from that date, as
he himself recognised, many who co-operated formally
with Melville were very far removed from him in
spirit. It was these " profane ministers " who presided
over the anti-Presbyterian reaction, some as Commis-
sioners of Assembly, and some as bishops ; and
associated with them were several who had really
been zealous for theocracy in former days. Nicolson,
reputed "the chief contriver of the plots for the
advancing of the Episcopal course," 1 and who died
Bishop- designate of Dunkeld, had been James Melville's
bosom friend ; Hall, who declared that the point at
issue between the King and the Aberdeen Assembly
was " not worth two straws," 2 had refused to subscribe
the " Black Acts " ; Buchanan had protested against
the action of the Assembly in annulling Archbishop
Adamson's excommunication ; Galloway had exhorted
the King to return thanks for the Eaid of Kuthven ;
Cranston, " now key-cold," 3 had read the story of
Haman and Mordecai to the " choice professors " on
the memorable 17th December ; and of the forty- two
ministers who protested against the Act of 1606 in
favour of the hierarchy three afterwards became
bishops. Even amongst those who remained loyal to
Presbyterianism there was a growing desire for peace.
Balcanquhal urged the Presbytery of Edinburgh to
1 Scot, p. 177. 2 Forbes' Records, p. 443. 3 Calderwood, v. 512.
BISHOPS OVERRULED BY THE KING 313
accept the Constant Moderator, in whose favour he
resigned ; a Patrick Simpson, the most prominent of
the party and by far its finest spirit, reminded his
brethren " that the marches of God's commandments
were broken by some through words of fleshly con-
tention, rather rankling the wound nor healing the
sore of our diseased Church " 2 and we have a good
example of religion reverting under pressure to a
milder and a purer type in the case of one Mac-
birnie, who, being called to account for preaching
against bishops and constant moderators, "promised
to meddle no more with these controverted points in
pulpit before the people, but only to preach Christ
Jesus till he saw his time," whereat, we are told,
"good brethren were offended. "3
The bishops were well aware that the bulk of the
clergy, in their desire for peace, would consent only to
such a fusion of Episcopacy and Presbytery as should
restrain the excesses of the latter ;4 and to this com-
promise, in the main, they faithfully adhered. But
James himself was the soul and centre of the hierarchy ;
and James acted in such a manner as to overrule the
discretion of the bishops, and finally to discredit them as
the mere instruments of his arbitrary power. It is said
that, when the proceedings of the first Linlithgow
Assembly were reported at Court, the King " sharply
rebuked" the bishops for not asserting their right to
moderate the synods, and insisted on the Act being
1 Calderwood, vi. 628. 2 Ibid. vii. 24. 3 Ibid. vi. 682.
4 " The great multitude of the Ministry are desirous that Presbyteries
shall stand, but directed and governed by the Bishops, and so would refer
great matters to be done only by the consent and authority of the
Bishops." — Gladstanesto King James, April 18, 1610; Botfield's Original
Letters, i. 245.
314 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
extended before it was published.1 Spottiswoode says
that in 1610 the King was " daily urging the bishops tx>
take upon them the administration of all Church affiairs,"
which they were unwilling to do without the approbation
of the Assembly ;2 and the Anglican consecration, for
which the King was entirely responsible, is said to have
been resented by some of the bishops, and was very little
valued by all.
It was indeed becoming only too apparent that King
James was as little careful as Andrew Melville to distin-
guish in practice between the two jurisdictions, and that
he was likely to intrude as far into the domain of the
Church as Melville had intruded into that of the State.
The Parliament of 1606 had acknowledged the King
"to be sovereign monarch, absolute prince, judge and
governor over all persons, estates, and causes, both spiri-
tual and temporal" ; the two courts of High Commission,
afterwards fused into one, had been established solely by
the royal authority ; in 1614, professedly as a means of
detecting Papists, all persons were required to commu-
nicate at their own parish kirks on April 24, that
being Easter Day ; and next year a proclamation was
published at the Cross that the communion should be
celebrated on Easter Day in all time coming.3 The
Parliament of 1617, at which the King presided in
person, restored the cathedral chapters, and obliged
them to elect as bishop whatever person, being an actual
minister, should be nominated by the Crown. At the
same Parliament the Lords of the Articles agreed upon
an Act " That whatsoever his majesty should determine
in the external government of the Church with the
advice of the archbishops, bishops, and a competent
1 Calderwood, vi. 629-630. 2 Spottiswoode, iii. 205.
3 Botfield's Original Letters, i. 449-450.
THE FIVE ARTICLES 315
number of the ministry,1 should have the strength of a
law"; and when he found that over fifty ministers,
including such special friends of his own as Galloway
and Hall, were prepared to protest against it, James
withdrew the Act "as a thing no way necessary, the
prerogative of his crown bearing him to more than was
declared by it."2
What was meant by the Act thus contemptuously
withdrawn soon became apparent. In the previous year
James had intimated his pleasure that certain practices
hitherto unknown in the Reformed Church of Scotland
should be revived — kneeling at communion, private com-
munion and private baptism, episcopal confirmation,
and the observance of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter,
Ascension Day, and Trinity Sunday. Spottiswoode, who
in 1615 had succeeded Gladstones as Archbishop of St.
Andrews, represented to the King that these five articles
could not be inserted amongst the Canons till they had
received the approbation of the Church; and towards
the end of his sojourn in Scotland from May 13
to August 3, 1617, James consented that an Assembly
for this purpose should be held at St. Andrews in the
following November. The St. Andrews Assembly post-
poned consideration of three of the articles, and came as
near as it safely could to the rejection of the other two,
consenting merely that communion ' ' in presence of six
elders and other famous witnesses," might be adminis-
tered to any sick person who had been bed-ridden for a
year and who should declare on oath that he or she did
not expect to recover, and also that a short table should
be set in every church, at which the minister should
deliver the bread and wine out of his own hands to the
1 These words were inserted at the request of the bishops.
2 Spottiswoode, iii. 241-245 ; Calderwood, vii. 250-256.
316 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
people.1 James replied to these proceedings by com-
manding the two archbishops, as they would avoid his
high displeasure, to " keep Christmas Day precisely," as
well as to withhold the stipends of all ministers who
should fail to advocate the Five Articles ; and in his own
hand he added this postscript : — " Since your Scottish
Church hath so far contemned my clemency, they shall
now find what it is to draw the anger of a King upon
them." Soon afterwards, in a letter to Spottiswoode, he
commented sarcastically on the conduct of the Assembly
in insisting that the sick communicant should be "sworn
to die," and in providing a table for "the minister's ease
and commodious sitting on his tail," in virtue of which
and other defects he required the two Acts to be entirely
suppressed. 2 In January, 1618, all persons were com-
manded by proclamation to abstain from work on the
five Holy Days that they might the better attend the
services which His Majesty, with the advice of the
Church, would appoint to be held on these days ; and at
the request of the bishops James consented to convene
another Assembly at Perth, on August 25.
At the opening of this Assembly Archbishop Spottis-
woode preached a remarkable sermon. He protested
" in the presence of Almighty God " that the Five
Articles had been sent to him without his knowledge,
against his desire, and when he least expected them, not
to be proposed to the Church, but to be inserted by the
King's sole authority amongst the Canons ; had it been
in his power, he would most willingly have declined
them, not because he thought them either unlawful or
inconvenient, but because he " foresaw the contradiction
which would be made and the business we should fall
lScot, p. 252 ; Calderwood, vii. 286.
2Botfield's Original Letters, ii. 524, 525 ; Spottiswoode, p. 249-250.
THE ARTICLES ACCEPTED 317
into" ; the Articles were the King's " own motions," and
not being unscriptural, they ought to be accepted as
such ; for James was not only their King, to whom dis-
obedience in things indifferent was a sin, but so eminent
a theologian that he knew " what is fit for a Church to
have, and what not, better than we do all." l In a
letter presented by the Dean of Winchester James gave
the Assembly clearly to understand that, if they refused
to accept the innovations, he would enforce them on his
own authority. After three days' discussion, mostly in
committee, the Articles were accepted by a majority,
only two out of thirty laymen voting against them, and
on fewer than thirty-nine out of eighty-five ministers.2
Three years later, in the Parliament of 1621, the Articles
were ratified by 78 votes to 50, half the shire members
and more than half of the burgesses voting in the
minority.
There are few episodes in the history of the Scottish
Church more exasperating than this. For the sake of
these wretched Articles, the establishment of wrhich he
was said to desire more than all the gold of India,a
James imperilled the results of more than twenty years'
labour in ecclesiastical reform. The Articles were all of the
" Anglopiscopapistical " kind, well calculated to make
Puritans believe that " the sound of the feet of Popery
is at the doors " ; they amounted to a gross violation by
the State of the spiritual province ; and they were
entirely opposed to the tendency of the Scottish Refor-
mation, which from a moribund Church had inherited
none of the Catholic spirit. The bishops yielded most
reluctantly to the caprice of their royal master. Private
1 Lindsay's True Narrative of the Perth Assembly, pp. 39-40.
2 Ibid. p. 72 ; Gardiner, iii. 237.
3Calderwood, vii. 311 ; Spottiswoode's speech to Assembly.
318 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
communion and private baptism, as mere privileges,
they were not called upon to enforce ; but they never
practised confirmation ; l and of the ministers sum-
moned before the High Commission for neglect of the
other two Articles many were dismissed with an
admonition, whilst Bishop Bellenden of Dunkeld was
content to " oversee " a minister, who had threatened
him personally from the pulpit with endless shame and
eternal torment. 2 James was so far from appreciating
the forbearance of the bishops that in November, 1619,
he writes to them thus : — " I do command you, as you
will be answerable to me, that ye depose all these that
refuse to conform without respect of persons, no ways
regarding the multitude of the rebellious ; for, if there be
not a sufficient number remaining to fill their places, I
will send you ministers out of England." 3 After the
Perth Articles had been confirmed by Parliament, he
reminded the bishops that the sword was now put into
their hands, " and let it rust no longer till ye have per-
fected the service trusted to you, or otherwise we must
use it both against you and them."4
It is easy to understand why the first Article and the
last should have been so bitterly opposed ; for kneeling
at communion was regarded not unreasonably as
suggesting the Adoration of the Host, and the com-
memoration of the Christian Year had been condemned
by the Church as unscriptural and superstitious ever
since the Reformation. On Christmas Day, 1618, the
Great Church of Edinburgh was not half filled, whilst
'" the dogs were playing in the midst of the flour of the
Little Kirk for rarity of people" ; and every year, as
this festival came round, scores of citizens kept their
1 Grub, ii. 325, 361. 2 Eow, p. 349-350.
3Calderwood, vii. 397. 4 Ibid. 508.
KNEELING AT COMMUNION 319
booths open, and by way of protest walked ostentatiously
before them in time of sermon. At the Easter of 1619,
the first after the Perth Assembly, it was in vain that
the ministers promised to allow their parishioners to sit,
stand, or kneel, and that one, more desperate than the
rest, offered communion " to persons behaving themselves
five sundry ways." The townspeople streamed out "in
hundreds and thousands" to St. Cuthbert's, the Abbey
Church, and a church at Leith, where communion was
dispensed in the old style ; and when the ministers of
these churches had been suspended, many, in order to
avoid kneeling, went as far as Dunfermline. In some
cases the minister found himself suddenly deserted by
his entire flock ; in others there was unseemly wrangling
between the minister and the people ; and even those
who, like the clergy of Edinburgh, waived the obligation
of kneeling, were often foiled in their efforts to distribute
the elements out of their hands. The communicant on
receiving a wafer would insist on sharing it with his
neighbours ; and on one occasion the minister is said
to have snatched away the bread thus circulating just as
a woman was lifting it to her mouth. The scandal of
such scenes soon became altogether intolerable. Arch-
bishop Spottiswoode, who could scarcely conceal his
contempt for the whole paltry business, not only
ceased to urge the obnoxious Article, but rebuked some
of his clergy for pressing it. At his visitation of King-
horn in 1622 he replaced the non-kneeling elders who
had been expelled from the session; and in 1624 the
ministers of Edinburgh bitterly reproached him for
encouraging the insubordination of their flock. James,
however, still continued to fulminate insane decrees,
which his lieutenants, civil and ecclesiastical, had neither
the power nor the inclination to enforce. In June,
320 BISHOPS AND PRESBYTERS, 1572-1625
1624, he sharply rebuked the Privy Council for
forbearing to punish certain nonconformists ; soon
afterwards he warned the magistrates of Edinburgh
that, if they were not more careful in future both to
obey and to enforce the Five Articles, he should
remove the courts of justice from the town ; and one of
his last public acts in Scotland was, on the strength of
this threat, to proclaim a general Christmas communion,
which was prevented only by the breaking out of the
plague — not a bad visitation, Calderwood remarks, but
just enough to scatter the people ; for " the Lord would
have His hand in the business to let the world see
that He can overrule Kings." *
1 Calderwood, vii. 341, 359, 360, 563, 600, 615, 621, 622, 629 ;
Eow, p. 321.
CHAPTER X.
THE KEIGN OF THE MODERATES.
THE chief characteristic of the Moderates — the Episco-
paux pacifiques, as Arnauld so happily calls them—
was their love of peace ; and the ecclesiastical settle-
ment was evidently the work of men anxious, so far
as possible, to reconcile the old system and the new.
Had the bishops been left to themselves, they would
probably have been content to preside as Commis-
sioners of Assembly over a Presbyterian Church ; and
even after all the pressure brought to bear upon
them by the Crown, the old framework of kirk-
sessions, presbyteries, and synods still remained intact.1
The ordinary life of the Church was very little affected
by the change in its external form. Public worship
1 Hume of Godscroft rather finely compares these "shadows and shows
of our discipline" to the survival of the old Eoman constitution under the
dictatorship of Julius Caesar. — Letter to Bishop Law, Calderwood, vii. 68.
This was just before the Glasgow Assembly of June, 1610 ; but even
after that date Presbytery was far more of a reality than the Comitia in
Home after the battle of Pharsalia. On the other hand, Clarendon greatly
underrates the power of the bishops in Scotland, when he says that
" there was little more than the name of Episcopa.cy preserved in that
church." — History, edition 1849, i. 123. It may be added that Hume's
parallel is more specious than true, for the Comitia had been strangled by
the Senate long before Caesar established his supremacy over both.
X
322 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
was modified only by the first Article of Perth ; and
the attempt to enforce that Article had almost entirely
failed. Calderwood asserts that not one person in
forty received the communion kneeling, and Scot that
the practice was unknown in two-thirds of the con-
gregations of Scotland.1 Summary excommunication
had, indeed, been abolished as early as 1597, and
after 1610 no person could be excommunicated without
the consent of the bishop of the diocese ; but the
kirk-sessions continued to be as active and as merci-
less as ever, and the Church, as a whole, sought to
compound for its acceptance of prelacy by a rigorous
prosecution of Papists. To the virtues of the Apostoli-
cal Succession — communicated, it is true, uncanonically
and by a somewhat suspicious channel — the Scottish
episcopate awoke only in its decline, and in all but
a few cases never discovered them at all. It was not
till July, 1631, that the jus divinum of Episcopacy
was asserted from the pulpit ; and Maxwell, one of
the ministers of Edinburgh, who preached on that
occasion, got so little thanks from the bishops that
they warmly repudiated his doctrine, and told him it
could not be proved.2 Row tells us that at the
ordination of his nephew, William Row, the Bishop
of Dunblane professed that he came there, not as a
bishop, but as a member of the Presbytery, and that
he would ask nothing that was not contained in the
Psalm-Book ; 3 and Bishop Andrew Knox, after his
translation in 1611 from the see of the Isles to that
of Raphoe in Ireland, is said to have behaved in a
still more irregular manner. He not only allowed
Livingstone, one of the Scottish nonconformists, to
1 Calderwood, vii. 611 ; Scot, p. 310.
2 Row, p. 354. 3 Ibid. p. 326.
ARCHBISHOP SPOTTISWOODE 323
be ordained in his presence by presbyters, but gave
him the Ordinal beforehand that he might mark any
passages which he did not desire to be read. The
book, however, proved to have been so thoroughly
expurgated by former candidates of his own school
that Livingstone found nothing to suppress.1
As an experiment in compromise, the new order
was mainly the work of Spottiswoode, who presided
over it with more or less of authority from its beginning
to its close. At the end of 1604 he was admitted
Archbishop of Glasgow, to which office he had been
nominated in July of the previous year; in May, 1615,
he succeeded Gladstanes as Archbishop of St. Andrews ;
he was deposed with the other prelates in November,
1638 ; and he died in London in November, 1639.
Horace Walpole once said that " the first' quality of a
prime minister in a free country is to have more
common sense than any man " ; and if the Church of
Scotland had been really free, she could hardly, in that
explosive age, have had a better Primate. Spottiswoode
was an able administrator of the true aristocratic type,
cool and self-contained, unimaginative, little open to
ideas, drawing largely on his privilege as a Moderate to
be at ease in Sion, and penetrated with a well-bred
conviction that enthusiasts of all kinds do more harm
than good. His subservience to the King, from which
the Church suffered so much, was due in part to the
extreme weakness of his position, but also to his
indifference to many things which his countrymen
regarded as of supreme importance. When he was
in France as chaplain to the Duke of Lennox in 1601,
he did not scruple to be present as a spectator at Mass,
and to approach so near that he had to kneel at the
1 " Life of Livingstone " — Select Biographies (Wodrpw Society), i. 141.
324 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
elevation of the Host.1 In the days of the Melville
ascendency he had been nearly suspended for profanation
of the Sabbath ; 2 and after he became a bishop and one
of the King's chief advisers, he was wont to economise
time by travelling on Sundays.3 In 1595, during some
sharp fighting on the streets of Edinburgh, he showed
conspicuous courage ; 4 his temper, though generous and
easily appeased, was somewhat hasty ; and he had
neither leisure nor patience to study the prejudices of
men who were continually on the watch to see whether
he ordered his coach or his barge in time of sermon,
whether he played cards on Sunday afternoons, and
whether he had morning and evening prayers. To such
a man, as to others of a far more earnest spirit, the
Five Articles were "matters of moonshine" — trivial
novelties, he told the Perth Assembly, which would soon
be quite familiar, according to the proverb, " A wonder
lasts but nine nights in a town." 5 The nonconformists
were "fools to leave their places for such trifles";
and doubtless in his private judgment the King, to
insist on them, was little better. At the examination of
one Scrimgeour, minister of Kinghorn, before the High
Commission, he admitted that the Church was well
before the Articles were introduced, and would still
be well, if they were withdrawn ; but when Scrimgeour
interpreted this as an argument in his favour, he said
cynically, " I tell you, Mr. John, the King is Pope now,
and so shall be."6 It did not occur to Spottiswoode
that it could not be of no consequence whether people
1 Calderwood, vi. 136. 2 Scot, p. 239.
3 Spottiswoode is said to have made no less than fifty journeys to
London. — Keith's Catalogue, p. 263.
4 Calderwood, v. 361. 5 Lindsay's Perth Assembly, p. 22.
6 Calderwood, vii. 421.
SPOTTISWOODE'S HISTORY 325
knelt or sat at communion, so long as James in such
matters asserted the authority of the Pope ; for he
had neither the prejudice nor the imaginative insight
which would have shown him that even in trifles a great
principle may often be at stake. Yet the alternative to
obedience was indeed a serious one ; and we shall find
that a bishop of even higher name was not disposed
to resist the King at the cost of reviving the lamentable
dissensions between Church and State.
Spottiswoode' s History of the Church of Scotland,
undertaken at the request of King James, was not
published till 1651, twelve years after the Primate's
death. It is by no means so unfair a work as M'Crie
would have us believe ; for, though he does occasionally
misrepresent facts, as in his account of the Assembly of
1610 where he gives the Acts in favour of the bishops,
not as passed by the Assembly, but as ratified by
Parliament in 1612, Spottiswoode has at least the desire
to appear impartial, and he is far more alive to the
relative value of testimony than such mere fanatics as
Bannatyne, Calderwood, and Row. The book, however,
is chiefly remarkable for its severe restraint of phrase
and feeling, for its enlightened moderation and its
essentially modern spirit, in which respects, despite its
occasional cynicism, it is a worthy memorial both of
the Primate and of his party in the Church. Spottis-
woode's estimate of Knox would probably have been
much less favourable, if he had believed him to be the
author of the History whose " scurrile discourses" he
describes as " more fitting a comedian on a stage than a
divine or minister " ; l and he is more sincere than
charitable in his caustic references to Andrew Melville
and Davidson, the latter of whom he once called " the
1 Spottiswoode, ii. 184.
326 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
maddest man that ever he knew. " l It may have been
as false as it was ungenerous to say of Melville's last
days at Sedan that he " lived in no great respect " ;
but his end was sufficiently unhappy to justify Spottis-
woode in rebuking those who had exulted with most
unholy joy over the disgrace of Adamson. If, he says,
one were to interpret Melville's fate as a j udgment on
his career, "it might be as probably spoken, and with
some more likelihood, than that which they blasted
forth against the dead bishop. But away with such
rash and bold conceits ; the love of God either to
causes or persons is not to be measured by these
external and outward accidents." 2
The business of the Perth Articles had shown that
ritualism from motives of prudence was hardly less
distasteful to the bishops than on religious grounds
to the Church at large ; and when Charles I. , after
some hesitation, resolved to adhere to his father's
policy, he took care to make bishops only of men
who were in harmony with his design. According
to Bishop Guthrie, it had been usual for the Crown
during the reign of James to fill up each vacant bishop-
ric out of three or four names submitted, after con-
sultation with his brethren, by the Archbishop of St.
Andrews. But Charles dispensed his patronage at
Court ; and the character as well as the origin of the
new appointments was calculated to create a sort of
schism between the young prelates and the old.3 Dr.
Lesley, rector of St. Faith's within Laud's own diocese
of London ; William Forbes, " anti-presbyterian to the
1 Calderwood, vii. 502. 2 Spottiswoode, iii. 183.
3 Memoirs, pp. 13-15. Guthrie's statements are criticised as improbable,
or at all events exaggerated, by Mr. Grub, ii. 380 ; but though it cannot
be said that James's bishops and Charles's took opposite sides, we shall
find that the former, as a body, were far more moderate than the latter.
BISHOP WILLIAM FORBES 327
outmost," 1 who had drafted the first and most obnoxious
of the Five Articles ; Maxwell, who had first asserted
the divine right of Episcopacy ; Sydserf, " a bitter
enemy to sincere professors" ;2 Wedderburn, the special
confidant of Laud and a prebendary in the cathedral of
Wells ; Whitford, another divine of the same stamp —
these were all made bishops, and the last four, the
leaders of the " Canterburian faction," conducted them-
selves with a violence and lack of temper, of which
Sydserff, who survived the Restoration, is said to have
" made great acknowledgments in his old age." 3 To call
these men moderate would obviously be an abuse of
terms ; but it is necessary to say something of them
here, partly because they belong historically to the
moderate party, and as we shall see in the next chapter,
were the chief instruments of its fall, but also because
in one respect they were really more moderate and
liberal than the Moderates themselves.
Maxwell was the most vigorous of the High Church
prelates, but the noblest, most learned, and most
amiable, beyond all comparison, was William Forbes,
the first Bishop of Edinburgh, who died in 1634, only
three months after his admission to the see. Forbes
had been one of the ministers of Edinburgh from 1621
to 1626, but was so little appreciated there that he was
glad to return to his native town of Aberdeen. He was
a man of the most fervent piety, of ascetical habits and
extraordinary vehemence in preaching. Burnet was
often told by his father " that he never saw him but he
thought his heart was in heaven " ; * and Spalding de-
scribes him as " a matchless man of learning, languages,
1 Gordon's Scots A/airs, iii. 239. 2 Kow, p. 375.
3 Burnet's History of His Own Time, i. 45.
4 Preface to Life of Bishop Bedell.
328 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
utterance and delivery, ane peerless preacher, of ane
grave and godly conversation." l With the best inten-
tions, however, Forbes probably did more to excite
opposition to the hierarchy than any other prelate.
The ideal of his life was to reconcile the Roman and the
Reformed communions ; and to this end he made con-
cessions, which even the most moderate of his own
party regarded as far too great. It was sufficiently
startling to an Edinburgh audience in these days to be
told from the pulpit that Christ died for all, that the
Pope is not Antichrist, that a Papist, living and dying
as such, may be saved, that Christ is really present in
the sacrament, though in what manner cannot be
known ; 2 but the Presbyterians believed their worst
fears to be realised when a copy of Forbes's Considera-
tiones Modestae came into their hands in 1640. In
this treatise he maintains that transubstantiation is no
heresy, but merely a trivial error ; that the Church of
Rome is not to be condemned for denying the cup to
the laity ; that prayers for the dead are most profitable ;
and that there may well be an expiatory, though not a
punitive purgatory.3
The Catholic sympathies of Forbes received little
support even in the University of Aberdeen, which was
the stronghold of Episcopacy, and which in 1637
formally approved the labours of John Durie, son of one
of the ministers banished on account of the Assembly of
1605, to promote a reconciliation between the Lutheran
and Calvinistic Churches. But, though Forbes in this
respect stood somewhat alone, the whole ritualistic
party was at one with him in his dislike of dogmatism,
1 Memorials of the Troubles, i. 45.
2 Eow, p 372.
3 Baillie's Supplement of the Canterburian Self-Conviction.
LIBERALITY OF CREED 329
and in his desire to liberate the Church from its thraldom
to the schools. In a sermon, which he preached
before Charles at Edinburgh in 1633, "he condemned
the eagerness with which positive opinions were laid
down regarding Predestination, and Divine Grace, and
the manner in which the Body of Christ was present in
the Eucharist " ; l and Baillie in his indictment of the
Considerationes Modestae says that "his ordinary
course " is always to make light of the chief points of
controversy between the old faith and the new, holding
" that all who make so much noise about these things,
whether Papists or Protestants, are but rigid, passionate,
uncharitable and weak-witted men." Unhappily, how-
ever, for those who took their inspiration from Laud,
they only increased their unpopularity by this assertion
of intellectual freedom ; for the Puritans in both
kingdoms were, above all things, dogmatic ; and they
were hardly more unwilling to comply with Laud's
rigour in point of ritual than to avail themselves of the
latitude which he permitted, and even inculcated, in
matters of faith. Moreover, Laud's laxity of doctrine
did not preclude him from favouring those whose
opinions harmonised best with his view of the import-
ance of religious rites ; he openly adhered to the system
of Arminius, with its corollary of salvation by works, in
opposition to Calvin's theory of justification by faith ;
and thus in the eyes of Puritans Laud's theology was
no better than his ritual, except that they were free
to disbelieve the former so long as they practised the
latter.
The Calvinistic doctrine of election and reprobation
in its most revolting form had been re-affirmed by the
Scottish Church in the Confession of Faith drawn up
1 Grub, ii. 348.
330 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
so recently as 1616; but all the ritualistic prelates,
especially Wedderburn, were avowed Arminians ; and
in 1630 Maxwell, afterwards Bishop of Ross, preached a
sermon at Edinburgh, in which we see the new theology
at its best. He declared that Christ descended to hell
to rescue the souls of the virtuous and renowned pagans ;
and " for my own part," he said, " I so love these
wights for their virtues' sake that I had rather admit
twenty opinions, such as limbus patrum, than damn
eternally the soul of one Cicero or one Socrates." * But
perhaps the best example of " a professed Arminian and
Popish champion " is Baillie's cousin, John Crighton,
who was the first minister deposed as such by the
Assembly of 1638. Crighton had dissented from a
petition of the Presbytery of Paisley against the Service
Book ; the Presbytery, on the complaint of some of his
parishioners, proceeded against him for erroneous
doctrine ; and the opinions attributed to him, most of
which were proved to have been uttered out of the
pulpit, are of considerable interest. As to his alleged
popery, he was said to have advocated confession and
prayers for the dead ; to have described the English
Liturgy as " so excellent and perfect that neither man
nor angel could make a better " ; to have taught that
both Papists and Protestants went to heaven, though
they entered by different gates, and that to sit at com-
1 Stevenson's History of Church and State, edition 1840, p. 124.
Principal Lee {Lectures on Scottish Church History, ii. 234) is as much
scandalised by such indecent liberality as was Luther, when he read
those noble words of Zwingli, written just before his death, in which
" he described that future ' assembly of all the saintly, the heroic, the
faithful and the virtuous,' when Abel and Enoch, Noah and Abraham>
Isaac and Jacob, will mingle with ' Socrates, Aristides, and Antigonus,
with Numa and Camillus, Hercules and Theseus, the Scipios and the
Catos,' and when every upright and holy man who has ever lived will be
present with his God." — Lecky's Rationalism, i. 420.
A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 331
munion was "to sit with God cheek by joule." His
Arminianism — or rather the liberal theology denounced
as such1 — was quite as apparent, and was still more
forcibly expressed. He taught " that Christ died alike
for all — for Judas and Peter " ; that it was possible for
us to fulfil the law ; 2 that, in spite of Christ's predic-
tion, " Peter might have contained his tongue within his
teeth and not denied Christ " ; and " that the difference
between Papists and Protestants, Calvinists and
Lutherans, Arminians and Gonnarians, Conformists and
Nonconformists, is but a mouthful of moonshine, and
if churchmen were peaceably set, they might be easily
reconciled." Predestination he denounced with noble
vehemence as "a doctrine rashly devised, hatched in
hell, and worthy to be delete out of God's Word."
" ' Whoever mentions,' said he, ' election or reprobation
before the foundation of the world, mentions a damnable
doctrine.' "3
We cannot, however, regard such men as Crighton and
William Forbes, liberal and enlightened and charitable
as they were, as true representatives of the Church which
had emerged, weaker but infinitely wiser, from its long
conflict with the State. The disciple of Laud and the
disciple of Melville agreed in this, that each regarded his
1 " Armiuianism was ... a great deal more than a mere system of
doctrines. It raised, wherever it spread, a new spirit of religious inquiry.
It opened up large questions as to the interpretation of Scripture, and
the position and value of dogma altogether, and in short, diffused a
latitudinarian atmosphere." — Tulloch's Rational Theology in England in
the Seventeenth Century, i. 73.
2 The extreme Calvinists held not only that the natural man could not
fulfil the law, but that it was impious in him to try. " There is never a
good action that we do, suppose it glance never so well before the world,
if it be not done in faith, but it is abomination before God and will help
forward to our damnation." — Bruce's Sermons, Woodrow edition, p. 121.
3 Cameron Lees's Abbey of Paisley, pp. 289-293.
332 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
ecclesiastical system as of so high an origin that any
departure from it was not inexpedient merely, but sinful.
Crighton is said to have inculcated confession on the
ground that he had as much power as the apostles to
forgive sins ; and sacerdotalism was to be as fatal to
the Laudians in the immediate future, as theocracy in
the long run to the school of Knox and Melville. Not
by such as these was the destiny of the Church to be
fulfilled. Between the Episcopalians and the Presby-
terians— the one subordinating the doctrine of the
Church to its external order, the other permitting no
relaxation either of polity or of doctrine — stood the men
who might have been either Episcopal or Presbyterian,
because they believed that Christianity had no vital
connexion with its outward forms. In these men was
embodied the fundamental tendency of the Church of
Scotland, the central mass from which the advocates of
divine right, whether Episcopal or Presbyterian, have
since seceded ; and their ruling principle was happily
expressed, many years later, by Archbishop Leighton—
himself the noblest of all witnesses to its truth : "The
mode of church government is immaterial, but peace
and concord, kindness and goodwill are indispensable."
Of this moderate party, Spottiswoode was long the
patron, and always, perhaps the reputed head ; l but he
was rather an able administrator than a leader of
thought, and in his later years he suffered himself to
lln his Life of Blair under date 1635, comparing the episcopal govern-
ment of Charles I.'s reign with that of the Restoration, Eow says that
"the bishops (especially Spottiswood) were more moderate, and dealt
with the King for moderation, and did strive to keep off innovations, such
as surplice, liturgy, etc., and did depose very few of the nonconformists ;
for in the province of Fife there were only two deposed ; and then they
never challenged deposed ministers for public preaching and assisting
at the celebration of the communion." — p. 137.
BISHOP COWPER 333
be practically superseded by the Laudian prelates. A
man of finer, but of much less robust mould was William
Cowper, brother of that John Cowper who in 1587
created a disturbance in St. Giles's by trying to keep
Adamson out of the pulpit. Cowper, who in 1612
became Bishop of Galloway, was one of the so called
"apostate ministers." At the Parliament of 1606 he had
subscribed the protestation against the re- establishment
of the spiritual estate ; and soon afterwards — as appears
from his letter preserved by both Scot and Calderwood
— he severely rebuked Bellenden, another of the sub-
scribers, for accepting the bishopric of Dunblane. The
lapsing of so distinguished a divine, one of the most
eloquent preachers at that time in Britain, exasperated
the Presbyterians to the last degree ; and Cowper, by
offering publicly to satisfy his accusers, involved himself
in such a war of speech and paper with enthusiasts of
both sexes, who attacked him anonymously and beset
him both in the streets and in his own house, as is
admitted even by his friends to have hastened his death.
Of a gentle and kindly spirit, weak in nerve, and capable
of expressing his thoughtful fervour in a fine music of
words, he would probably have changed sides much
sooner but for that extreme sensitiveness which is cen-
sured in Spottiswoode's remark that he "affected too much
the applause of the popular."1 In 1610, in the Synod
of Fife, he thus rebuked his colleagues who scrupled to
receive Gladstanes as Moderator : " Brethren, I beseech
you in Christ, remember these things are not so essential
points as to rend the bowels of the Kirk for them. . . .
What joy can ye have for your suffering, when ye suffer
for a matter indifferent, as who shall be moderator ; who
shall have imposition of hands ? Wherefore serves it to
1 Spottiswoode, iii. 258.
334 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
fill the people's ears with contentious doctrine concerning
the government of the Kirk ? Were it not far better to
preach Christ sincerely, and to wait on and see what the
Lord will work in these matters ? " — to which one of the
opposite party made the characteristic answer: "A neu-
tral is not worthy to live in a commonwealth, let be
in the kirk of God."1 In his Christmas sermon on the
Perth Articles Bishop Cowper is particularly happy in
w^hat he calls " the hardest point of all." He would be
loath to condemn sitting, standing, or kneeling at com-
munion, for in so doing he must condemn his mother
Church, or the French Church, or the English. " I like
well," he said, "that modest judgment of Peter Martyr,
who thinks any of these, sitting, standing, or kneeling,
lawful." His tenure of power in Galloway is said to
have been stained by not a single instance of cruelty or
oppression ; but perhaps it was well for his good name
that he died only six months after the Articles became
the law of the Church. 2
Between Spottiswoode and Cowper there was a latent
antagonism of character corresponding to the lack of
sensibility in the one and the excess of it in the other ;
and Bishop Patrick Forbes may be said to have com-
bined, though in very unequal proportions, the best
qualities of both. In early youth, both at Glasgow and
St. Andrews, Forbes had been the devoted pupil of
iCalderwood, vii. 122, 123.
2 Cowper's Works, with Autobiography, published in 1629 ; Murray's
Literary History of Galloway. Bishop Cowper is said to have been very
fond of golf — " He loved that all his lifetime very much," says Bow. But
Row forgets that Ludos (amat) Gallua in the verses against the bishops,
applies not to Cowper, but to his predecessor ; and he is probably no
nearer the truth in his story of Cowper seeing a vision of £wo men with
drawn swords on the Links of Leith, and then taking instantly to bed,
and dying with the words, " a fallen star," on his lips. — p. 259.
BISHOP PATRICK FORBES 335
Andrew Melville, whom he accompanied in his flight to
England in 1584 ; his brother was the minister of
Alford, who presided as Moderator at the abortive
Assembly of 1605 ; and he was remotely connected with
the first Bishop of Edinburgh. In 1598, after having
lived for nine years in retirement near Montrose, he
succeeded to his father's estate of Corse in Aberdeen shire.
At that time the parish of Corse, and no less than
twenty other parishes in the district, were entirely
without pastors ; and King James may have been
influenced by some suspicion of the laird's antecedents,
when he required him to discontinue the Sunday
lectures which he had been induced to transfer from his
castle to the adjoining church. These lectures were a
concession to those who had long been urging him to
enter the ministry ; and he did enter it soon afterwards
at the entreaty of a clergyman, dying by his own hand,
who besought him to take his place. Forbes became
minister of Keith in 1612; in 1615, on the death of
Blackburn, one of the prelates nominated at the
Convention of Synods in 1600, the people of Aberdeen
wished to have him as their bishop ; but their wish was
not gratified till another vacancy occurred in December,
1617.
The bishopric of Aberdeen was offered to Forbes
at a very critical time. The King had shown himself
much displeased with the practical rejection of his
Articles by the Assembly at St. Andrews ; he had just
issued a proclamation requiring the observance of the
five festivals ; and there was a very general apprehension
that he would enforce the other Articles on his sole
authority. Forbes had this state of things in view
when he wrote the well-known letter to Spottiswoode,
in which he expressed his reluctance at such a time
336 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
to accept the episcopal office. He desired that the King
should intrude nothing on the Church, which had not
first been determined in a national council, exempt
both from fear and favour ; " but if things be so
violently carried as no end may appear of bitter con-
tention, neither any place left to men placed in rooms,
but instead of procuring peace and reuniting the hearts
of the brethren, to stir the coals of detestable debate,
for me I have no courage to be a partner in that work.
I wish my heart blood might extinguish the ungracious
rising flame in our Kirk." How the new bishop
contrived to reconcile the Assembly at Perth in the
following August with his idea of a national council,
in which the King " would neither make any man
afraid with terror nor pervert the judgment of any with
hope of favour," it is not easy to see — particularly as he
himself in his opening sermon exhorted his brethren
to beware of provoking the King's wrath. But, though
Forbes in this respect had overstated his demand, he
honestly believed that the King, with an Assembly of
some sort at his back, had more right to enforce the
Articles than a few individuals, by resisting them, to
disturb the peace of the Church. He came forward,
first of all, as the advocate of forbearance, if not of
toleration ; but when all his efforts failed either to win
over the nonconformists or to sweeten their temper, he
turned upon them with unexpected vigour. He branded
them as " contentious and troublers of the peace and
unity of the Kirk"; "he said they were like the
salamander that delighted to live in the fire ; because
there were matters brought into the Kirk which were
disputable, they would break the peace of the Kirk, and
set all on fire"; l and on one occasion when the bishops
1 Calderwood, vii. 491, 453.
BISHOP PATRICK FORBES 337
had agreed to petition the King in favour of toleration,
he indignantly protested against such a concession to
those who had denounced kneeling as idolatry, declaring
that, though he had once thought the matter indifferent,
he would now insist on it till they had publicly recanted
their error. " With such a zeal and courage," wrote
Spottiswoode on the occasion of the Bishop's death to
his son, " did he in that matter express himself as they
that made the motion were stricken dumb. Surely I
myself that never beheld him without reverence, did
hear him that day with wonder."
The conduct of Forbes as Bishop of Aberdeen was
such as to justify Burnet in describing him as "in
all things an apostolical man." He was an earnest
and indefatigable preacher ; twice in each year he
submitted himself unreservedly to the correction of
his synod ; every summer, accompanied only by a
single servant, he made a thorough visitation of his
diocese, in the course of which he was wont to test
the zeal and ability of his clergy by appearing unex-
pectedly in their churches ; and he laboured inces-
santly to promote a better organisation of the parishes,
disjoining many which had been united in the interest
of the tithe-owners, and subdividing others which were
too large. Under his superintendence the colleges of
Aberdeen were raised from the most wretched con-
dition to the highest efficiency and vigour. Such
was the respect entertained for him throughout the
whole district that he was able to avert much litigation
and even bloodshed amongst his neighbours by pre-
siding as arbiter in their disputes ; and even in old
age, when his right side was entirely paralysed, he
worked on unweariedly to the last. Patrick Forbes
was undoubtedly the most thoroughly able man whom
338 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
the Moderates possessed during their forty years of
power — more earnest than Spottiswoode, and far
stronger than Cowper. So long as he was able to
attend the Privy Council, he is said to have
strenuously resisted the efforts of Charles to assimi-
late the Church to the English pattern ; and had he
lived but three years longer, the Scottish episcopate
would hardly have perished so ingloriously as it
did.1
If Patrick Forbes, Spottiswoode, and Cowper were
the most distinguished of the Moderate prelates, there
were others whose unobtrusive goodness was better
known to their contemporaries than it can be to us.
Of Neil Campbell, who resigned the bishopric of
Argyll in 1608, we know almost nothing, except that
his virtues — and his alone — were cordially recognised
even by the scurrilous verse-mongers of the day ; and
Andrew Boyd, who succeeded Campbell's son in that
see, lives only in the glowing eulogy bestowed upon
him by Burnet, who says that he caused churches
and schools to be everywhere founded and endowed
in a country hitherto overrun with barbarity and
ignorance ; that his name, fifty years after his death,
was still held in particular veneration ; and that some
of the strictest Presbyterians had owned to him
"that if there were many such bishops, they would
all be Episcopal." 2 It is remarkable that the Bishop
of the Isles, another son of Bishop Campbell, was
the only prelate whose personal character the Cove-
nanters of 1638 did not venture to assail. According
to Gordon, he was supposed to have revived the
1 See the Biographical Memoir of Bishop Forbes by Charles Farquhar
Shand prefixed to the Spottiswoode edition of his Funerals.
2 Preface to Life of Bedell.
JOHN FORBES OF CORSE 339
primitive simplicity of St. Columba and St. Aidan,
" so that in all probability the episcopal sanctity was
fled to the confines of Christendom to hallow anew
the barbarous appendices of the Scottish continent." l
The University of Aberdeen was indebted mainly
to Bishop Forbes for the group of learned divines
who, in the paper war of 1638, achieved a blood-
less victory over the champions of the Covenant.
The most distinguished of these, and a scholar of Euro-
pean reputation, was the Bishop's second son and heir,
John Forbes, Professor of Divinity in King's College,
extolled by Burnet as "perhaps inferior to no man
of his age," and worthy to be mentioned here as
one of the truest and best representatives of the
Church of Scotland. John Forbes was ordained in
the Presbyterian form at Middleburg in 1619 ; and
though he afterwards strongly advocated Episcopacy,
he never ceased to regard it as a form of govern-
ment, expedient and scriptural indeed, but in no way
essential to the nature of the Church and the
validity of its orders. After the fall of the hier-
archy, though he had been deprived of his Chair and
forced even to leave the official residence which he
himself had presented to the University, he con-
tinued to worship with his Presbyterian brethren
and to participate in their communions. In 1644
he went abroad to escape the obligation of the
Solemn League and Covenant; and during his two
years of exile in Holland he preached frequently to
the English and Scottish congregations, worshipped
with the Dutch and French, and communicated in-
difterently with all. He died at Corse in April,
1648 — the Covenanters having previously refused his
1 Scots Affairs, ii. 142-143.
340 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
last request, that he might be buried with his wife
and father in St. Machar's Cathedral.1
About a year before John Forbes was ordained at
Middleburg, the death occurred of one, whose name for
Christian moderation and charity may well be coupled
with his. Patrick Simson, for nearly thirty years
minister of Stirling, was a Presbyterian of the strictest
sect. Although Archbishop Adamson was his maternal
uncle, he was one of the few ministers who refused
to subscribe the Acts of 1584 ; after the murder of
Moray he told King James from the pulpit that God
would hold him responsible for the crime ; he was with
the Blackness prisoners at their trial ; it was he who
penned and presented the protestation against the
bishops at the Parliament of 1606 ; and when he was
appointed one of the permanent moderators, he refused
to accept the office. But Simson, though as loyal to
Presbytery as Andrew Melville himself, was animated
by a very different spirit. We have seen how he
rebuked some of his brethren for their " words of fleshly
contention, rather rankling the wound nor healing the
sore of our diseased church " ; and he himself set an
example in this respect, which was much less agreeable
to the zealots of his own party than to those who had
vainly offered him, first a bishopric, and then a pension.
He dispensed communion on Easter Sunday till he
found that his action was misconstrued, when, in order
to show that one day was as good as another, he
dispensed it on the Sunday following. He corre-
sponded on friendly terms with Bishop Cowper ; he
applied for instructions to Archbishop Grladstanes*
diocesan synod ; and it was in discharge of a commis-
1 See Dr. Sprott's Article on John Forbes in the Dictionary of National
Biography.
INSTABILITY OF THE NEW ORDER 341
sion imposed upon him by Gladstanes' successor that
he contracted the ailment which caused his death.
Simson had greatly endeared himself to his parish-
ioners by appeasing their quarrels and working fear-
lessly among them in time of plague ; and during his
last illness — "albeit many years before his death he
was always dying" — people flocked from all quarters
to receive his blessing. "It is enough," he had once
said, " that I have liberty to teach Christ's gospel and
to die in God's peace and the king's " ; and his brother
tells us that he never repented of the " sweet purpose "
through which " he was ever bent to quietness in the
Kirk."1
It must be apparent even from this slight analysis
that the Church of Spottiswoode was a very different
institution from the Church of Knox and Melville —
different not so much in outward form as in spirit,
aspiration, and habit of thought. Had the new religion,
or rather the new interpretation of the old, been a
genuine product of the popular mind, it might easily
have expelled the poison instilled into it by James,
and still more decisively by Charles and Laud. We
have seen, however, that it was a forced and artificial
development — a system imposed from above on a people
neither ready nor willing to receive it, and elaborated
under the shelter of the Crown by a few individuals
who were far superior to the vulgar passions and pre-
judices of the day. Nothing shows this more clearly
than the foul abuse to which the bishops were continu-
ally exposed ; and it may be well in conclusion to
quote some of these " unrebukable men for outward
offences," as Cowper calls them, who had "made their
1 " Life of Patrick Simson :) by his brother Archibald — Select Biographies
(Wodrow Society), vol. i. ; Eow, pp. 422-437.
342 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
mouth like the mouth of the serpent, spewing out
words either of vanity or wickedness, like a deluge
of waters to drown themselves and carry others away
with them in the stream of their iniquity."
For this purpose we need not go beyond the two
contemporary annalists, Calderwood and Eow, both of
whom lived to play a part, more or less considerable,
in the Puritan revolution. Archbishop Gladstanes, a
singularly mediocre and harmless prelate, is called by
Row "a vile, filthy, belly-god beast" — "Let that per-
jured apostate's filthy memory stink, rot, perish."
Calderwood alludes to Gladstanes' successor as a " pro-
fane villain with an impudent face and a cauterised
conscience, a traitor profane and licentious" — this out-
burst being occasioned by the fact that Spottiswoode
had crossed over from Burntisland to Leith on Sunday
in time of sermon and played cards — as was supposed
— in the afternoon. He concludes that Bishop Cowper's
death cannot have been " gracious and comfortable,"
because no " loud report " was made of it as such.
Neither he nor Row admits a single virtue in
Patrick Forbes. Calderwood calls him a hypocrite,
and echoing Scot, an equally prejudiced but much more
decorous writer, says that "it is known well enough
that he undertook not the ministry till bishoprics were
in bestowing, and that he could find no readier mean
to repair his broken lairdship." l It need hardly be said
that such statements as these are merely examples of
that habit of swearing at large which had been trans-
mitted by Knox to all his spiritual children ; and
whoever hesitates to reject them as such would do well
to read the humanly impossible stories which Calderwood
has collected with regard to the behaviour of Archbishop
1 Row, p. 304 ; Calderwood, vii. 296, 350, 395 ; Scot, p. 254.
THEIR WORK 343
Adamson in London, or to compare Bishop Cowper's
noble sermon on the Perth Articles with the same
writer's account of it as so impertinent and frivolous
"that the meanest in judgment made a mock at him."1
On the whole, it would seem that a great injustice is
done to the Episcopal or Moderate party by those who
judge it exclusively from a political standpoint.2 The
bishops may well have failed as statesmen, for they had
no independent power, and the best of them sympathised
neither with the Puritans nor with the King ; but it
ought at least to be recognised that as religious teachers
they accomplished what was little short of a revolution
in the thought and character of the Church. It was a
great thing to have discredited the crude religious ideal
which had so long been paramount in the minds of the
Scottish people — to have taught that the life of
Christianity is not identified with any one of its
external forms, that the most perfect rectitude of faith
and conduct is no apology for an unchristian spirit,
that God is never further than from those who see Him
triumph in the confusion of their enemies, that the
kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but a spiritual
empire — the self-expansion which comes of full and
intelligent self-conquest in the hearts and lives of men.
We have seen that the Reformation favoured intellectual
progress in so far as it divorced the text of Scripture
from the fixed interpretation of the Church; and
assuredly, if there ever was a Second Reformation
1 Calderwood, vii. 342.
2 Mr. Gardiner is very hard on the bishops. He describes them as
" neither strong partisans nor wise mediators," as " drifting helplessly
like logs on the current of affairs," as such colourless souls as Dante
would have condemned " without appeal to an endless comradeship with
those who were alike displeasing to God and to His enemies." —
History, vii. 342.
344 THE REIGN OF THE MODERATES
in Scotland, it was not when fanaticism won a short-
lived triumph under the banner of the Covenant, but
when men began, however faintly, to realise that even
the Scriptures were designed rather to renew a right
spirit than to enforce a mechanical rule. To Spottis-
woode and his colleagues the maintenance of peace and
the things that make for peace was as much worth
toiling and suffering for as any dogma of the schools.
" For unity," writes one of them, " we should be ready
to lay down our lives as well as for verity. . . . Yea,
in my mind this is a greater martyrdom ; for in that
every man suffereth for his own soul only, but here he
suffers martyrdom for the whole Church." l It is to
this idea of the duty of mutual forbearance and con-
cession, imperfectly and even quite erroneously as it
was then understood, that we must attribute the finest
qualities of the new order — its dignity, its charity, its
courtesy, its largeness of mind and temper ; and these
qualities, surviving the fall of the hierarchy and con-
centrated in one master spirit during its temporary
restoration, were to pass from Episcopacy to Presbytery,
and to become the permanent heritage of the Church of
Scotland.
1 Lindsay's Perth Assembly — Preface.
CHAPTER XL
THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638.
AT the beginning of the seventeenth century the
Church of Scotland was no better endowed than in
1567, and had come no nearer to the " full posses-
sion " of the teinds or tithes, which were then
declared to be its proper patrimony. Before the
Reformation the tithes of two-thirds of the parish
churches had been annexed, with the churches them-
selves, to the bishoprics and abbeys ; and the great
nobles, who had engrossed the abbeys, were now in
possession of all their tithes, both original and
acquired. Those of the clergy who had succeeded
to parsonages surviving as such in 1560 drew the
whole tithes of the parish ; but, with this exception
—and many of the parsonages were held by laymen l
—the only provision for the Church was the thirds
of benefices, in so far as these were not claimed by
the Crown, supplemented by Queen Mary's grant of
all small livings under 300 merks a year. The thirds
were distributed by a joint commission of nobles and
clergy, which met annually in November ; the stipend
1 Thus John Lindsay, as his forensic title reminds us, was Parson of
Menmuir.
346 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
allotted was usually very small, it was granted only
from year to year, and owing to the wide ramifica-
tions of each great benefice, it was often payable at
a great distance from the parish. Queen Mary
granted a remission of the thirds to several of her
friends ; and the fund was gradually extinguished in
a manner very unfavourable to the Church. In
1592, but not till then, parsons actually serving as
ministers were released from payment of the thirds ;
bishops of the new order were exempted on condition
that they provided for the ministers of their bounds ;
and the Lords of Erection, where they did not escape
the tax, usually received their grants on the same
condition — a condition which they discharged so ill
that in many cases they did not even exercise their
rights as patrons. We have seen that in 1596
there were no fewer than 400 churches, exclusive of
Argyll and the Isles, without either minister or
reader.
The thirds being thus remitted without adequate
compensation, there was no alternative but to fall
back on the tithes. In the "Constant Platt" of
1596 it was proposed that every minister should have
a permanent provision out of the tithes of his parish ;
and though Lord Menmuir, the author of the scheme,
laid it aside " as a thing not like to be done in his
days," l a scheme substantially the same was adopted
twenty-one years later. The Act of 1617, which
empowered certain commissioners to assign a per-
petual local stipend, not less than five chalders of
victual or 500 merks nor more than eight chalders
of victual or 800 merks, out of the tithes of every
parish, brought all tithe-owners other than parsons
1 Melville's Diary, p. 229.
TYRANNY OF TITHE-OWNERS 347
under contribution to the Church, and secured, or
ought to have secured, to every minister then serving
in Scotland1 a competency payable at his own door.
It is probable that the average income of the clergy
was more than doubled in consequence of this statute,
which, however, fell short of Lord Menmuir's scheme,
inasmuch as the surplus tithes of each parish were
left undisturbed, instead of being applied to "the
common affairs of the kirk and other godly uses." 2
But the Act of 1617 hardly touched the real problem
which had been raised through the vast change in the
ownership of ecclesiastical property. In virtue of their
possession of the abbey lands the Lords of Erection
had acquired rights of superiority over a host of
vassals, whilst as Titulars of the Teinds they had power
over many landowners not otherwise subject to them.
By the law of Scotland the heritor could not gather in
his crop until the tithe-owner had taken up his share ;
and though several Acts had been passed to enforce
teinding within a reasonable time, he was bound, even
by the latest of these, where the titular did not claim
sooner, to leave his crop on the ground for twelve days
after cutting, and to preserve the teind-corn from
injury for eight days more.3 In many cases tithes had
been converted by agreement into a fixed amount of
the produce ; but where this had not been done the
heritor was always liable, through unfavourable weather,
to lose the whole or great part of his crop. It was
1 The commission was appointed only for one year ; and though in 1621
it was renewed less definitely in favour of churches " not already planted,"
it probably did more to improve the position of the clergy than to
increase their number.
2 Connell on Tithes, bk. ii. ; Forbes's Church Lands and Tithes, pp.
125, 126.
3 Connell, i. 126.
348 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
alleged against the nobles that they grossly abused their
privilege as tithe-owners to coerce the landed gentry ; l
and the privilege, whether abused or not, was a
formidable addition to the direct authority they
possessed over their own vassals.
With the tithe question in this, its political and social
aspect, Charles L set himself at once to deal. In 1625,
the first year of his reign, he issued an Act of
Revocation, " the most ample that ever was made," 2
annulling all grants and acquisitions to the prejudice
of the Crown during the two preceding years, particu-
larly the erection of Church lands, whether before or
after the Act of Annexation of 1587 — the former grants
on the ground that the Crown could not lawfully dispose
of benefices which churchmen as life- renters had no
power to resign, the latter on the ground that the Act
of Annexation had never been repealed. Whatever
may have been the sins of the nobility, this mode of
rectifying them was in itself a great wrong : it made no
allowance for titles purified through contract and
prescription, and it dispensed not only with the
erections, but with all Acts of Parliament confirming
the same. In the course of the next year two pro-
clamations were issued, the object of which was to
commend the King's project to the nation, and at the
same time to limit its scope. In the first of these
Charles avowed his intention to provide for the
ministry and the schools, to redress " the great
disorders and incommodities arising about teinds," and
" to free the gentry of this kingdom from all those
bands which may force them to depend upon any other
than upon his Majesty." In the second, he restricted
1 Large Declaration, p. 7 ; Heylyn's Laud, p. 237.
2 Forbes, p. 258.
COMMUTATION OF TITHES 349
his Revocation to the erections and other dispositions of
lands and patronages justly belonging to the Church or
Crown ; and to all who should surrender such he offered
a reasonable compensation.1 In August, 1626, as many
of the nobles still refused to give way, a process of
reduction was raised with a view to reducing or setting
aside the charters of erection as contrary to law ; and in
1628, in accordance with the decision of a committee of
inquiry appointed in the previous year, the great
majority of the nobles resigned their superiorities and
their right to other men's teinds, that is, to teinds
levied on other men's land, and submitted themselves
for compensation to the pleasure of the King.
The King's award on the question thus referred to his
decision was issued on September 2, 1629 ; and after all
deductions are made in favour of the Lord Advocate, Sir
Thomas Hope, Charles must be allowed great credit for
the four decreets-arbitral, extolled on one occasion by a
Scottish judge as exhibiting " a degree of wisdom, fore-
sight, and sound policy which has never been exceeded
in any age or nation."2 All Church lands, except those
of bishops, were henceforth to be held of the King — the
Lords of Erection on this understanding to retain their
estates, and also the feu-duties of their vassals until
these should be redeemed at fixed prices by the Crown.
The tithe question was settled on the sound principle
that every man should have his own teinds, whether he
bought them outright or leased them from the tithe-
owner for an annual sum. Tithes were to be valued
where they were paid in kind ; where they had been
1 Proclamations, February and July, 1626 ; Connell, ii. 57-67.
2 Lord Justice-Clerk Hope in the Prestonkirk Case, 1808. — Connell,
ii. 319. Mr. Gardiner refers to this "as the one successful action of
Charles's reign." — History, vii. 279.
350 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
already commuted for money or victual, the whole rent
of the land was to be valued, and the fifth part deducted
in perpetuity as the tithe ; and the heritor was at liberty
to buy up his tithe at nine years' purchase. Charles did
all in his power to push on the commutation of tithes,
which was enforced by Parliament in 1633;1 but in spite
of all the pressure brought to bear upon them by the
King, the heritors showed little disposition to purchase
their teinds, and not much even to have them valued,2
partly, no doubt, because, having no immediate prospect
of a rise in rent, they did not appreciate the benefit to
their posterity of a fixed rent charge, but also, one may
suspect, because Charles had somewhat exaggerated the
oppression of this class by the Titulars of the Teinds.
The clergy were great gainers by the King's scheme,
though the bishops had at first opposed it under the
impression that the sale of tithes would extinguish the
patrimony of the Church.3 The heritor could purchase
no more of his teind than what remained after the mini-
ster's stipend had been paid; stipends were also to be
granted or increased at each valuation; and the Teind
Commission of 1627, ratified by Parliament in 1633, was
empowered to provide for the clergy on a very liberal
scale. 800 merks, the maximum of stipend allowed by
the Act of 1617, now became the minimum; and the
generosity of the Commissioners, which Charles took
1 Acts of Parl. v. 34.
2 It appears from a report of Commissioners in 1636 that at that time
" the far greater sort are not yet valued." As to sales, few titulars can
have sold their tithes without compulsion, though some apparently did
so ; and it is remarkable that only two decrees of sale are recorded before
the Restoration, and none thereafter till 1679. It may be added that the
practice of levying tithes in kind, prohibited in 1633, had not been wholly
discontinued at the beginning of the present century, or even later. See
Connell, i. 169, 307, 308 ; ii; 113.
3 Forbes, pp. 265,266.
RESENTMENT OF THE NOBLES 351
pains to encourage, was not restricted to any maximum
at all.
The King professed in after years to have been pro-
fusely thanked by those whom through his dealing with
tithes he had delivered " from intolerable bondage " ; 1
but on the page of history the gratitude of the clergy
and lairds is much less conspicuous than the discontent
of the nobles. The nobles were hurt in pride as well as
seriously alarmed. Even in money value they had lost
something, though Charles might justly claim to have
satisfied them "to the uttermost farthing."2 We have
seen that, where tithes were sold, the minister's stipend
was deducted from the price ; and as tithes are gene-
rally allowed to have been both sold and commuted at a
lower rate than would have been the case, if they had
not been liable to augmentations of stipend,3 it is
obvious that the nobles were fully paid only on the
supposition — notoriously untrue — that they had hitherto
discharged their obligations to the Church. It is very
probable, as Charles supposed, that many of them were
discontented because they had been " robbed, as they
conceived, of the clientele and dependence of the clergy
and laity " ; for, though in a vast number of cases tithes
continued to be levied in kind, the heritor, who found
himself aggrieved by this practice, could now terminate
it at will. But even this, the avowed object of the
commutation of tithes, could hardly have proved fatal
to the King, if he had not prefaced the whole transac-
tion by so rash and so unwarranted a step. The ruling
1 Large Declaration, p. 9. 2 Ibid.
3 " In a process of augmentation . . . decided in 1669, it was argued on
the part of the minister that the heritors ' having bought their teinds at
nine years' purchase, are more than twice paid of the price since their
buying.' These heritors bought their teinds about 1630." — Connell, i.
302, note.
352 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
families never forgot that Charles had threatened, and
might threaten again, to deprive them at a stroke of
all that their ancestors had acquired from the fall of
the Ancient Church. Burnet assures us that, when Lord
Nithsdale came down from Court to make good the
Revocation, the nobles had resolved in the last resort
to take his life ; l and the significance of such a rumour
must be admitted, even if we question its truth. To
men, who had long been jealous of the bishops as their
rivals in rank and power, it seemed only too probable
that the Crown, at their instigation, should seek to
recover the patrimony of the Church ; and Sir James
Balfour hardly exaggerates the effect of the Revocation,
when he calls it " the ground stone of all the mischief
that followed after, both to this King's government and
family."2
The settlement of the Church lands and tithes was
finally adjusted and confirmed by Parliament during
the King's visit to Scotland in 1633. Charles had
a magnificent reception on his public entry into Edin-
burgh on June 15 ; but the coronation ceremony, three
days later, must have been even more offensive to
"good Christians" than to the Episcopalian Spalding,
who comments ruefully on the altar-like table with its
"blind books" and unlighted candles, on the rich vest-
ments of the five officiating bishops, and on their
becking and bowing as they passed the embroidered
crucifix.3 At St. Giles's on the following Sunday the
ordinary reader was displaced in favour of two royal
chaplains, who read, or as Row puts it, " acted " the
English service ; the Bishop of Moray preached in his
1 History of His Own Time, i. 36. See also Heylyn, p. 237.
2 Annals, ii. 128.
3 Memorials of the Troubles, i. 36.
BISHOPS SUPREME IN PARLIAMENT 353
rochet to a horrified congregation ; and Charles was
then feasted by the magistrates on the other side of the
street, with such noisy goodwill that the townspeople
had to dispense with their afternoon sermon.1
The nobles on this occasion complained of the consti-
tution as well as of the proceedings of Parliament. In
1617 they had objected to the way in which the Lords
of the Articles were chosen ; and that committee was
now constituted according to the invidious form intro-
duced in the last Parliament of 1621. The nobles
chose eight bishops, who in turn chose eight nobles, and
the sixteen thus elected chose eight lairds and eight
burgesses. Unless, therefore, they failed to find eight
friendly peers amongst the whole nobility, the bishops
could propose what measures they pleased ; and in
Parliament the bishops were merely the instruments of
the King. This increase of the royal power had arisen
through the conversion of the abbacies into temporal
lordships, for before that event the nobles with ecclesi-
astical titles were a large majority of the spiritual
estate. As already mentioned, an Act was passed
prohibiting the levying of tithes in kind. Most of the
charters of erection were expressly confirmed, but so
also, as a hint of what the King could do if he chose,
was the Act of Revocation ; and many of the nobles
vented what Clarendon calls their " thwarteous humour"
by opposing the ecclesiastical measures which Charles
had most at heart. The chief of these were two Acts
1 " As if," writes a Sabbatarian of the eighteenth century, " it had been
resolved to bid defiance to the Almighty God, the great institutor of the
Sabbath and author of divine ordinances, the noise of men speaking,
trumpets sounding, music playing, and singing, etc., was so great that
public worship could not be performed that afternoon in either of the
churches of St. Giles. This to sober minds may, at first, seem incredible."
— Stevenson's Church and State, edition 1840, p. 132.
Z
354 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
ratifying the religious legislation of James VI., and
empowering the King to regulate the apparel of church-
men ; and the latter, though engrossed by a " satanical
trick of bishops" in an Act declaratory of the royal
prerogative,1 was carried only by a small majority, which
was afterwards rumoured — falsely indeed — to have been
none at all. Charles gave deep offence to the opposition
by noting down their names with his own hand ; and as
he would not allow them to say anything in explanation
of their votes, they embodied their reasons of dissent in
the famous supplication, for which Lord Balmerino was
afterwards brought to trial.
It has been truly said that the sting of this petition lies
rather in its general tone than in any specific statement.2
It takes for granted that the whole ecclesiastical settle-
ment made by James VI. was unjust and illegal, and
it carries this so far as to make incidentally the
strange assertion that there were no " Parliamentary
Bishops" from the Reformation to the year 1609.
Charles refused to look at the petition, when it was
brought to him by the Earl of Rothes, a leading tithe-
owner, of whom he " had the worst opinion " ; but
Balmerino, son of that President of the Court of Session,
noted by Spottiswoode as a great enemy of the bishops,3
retained a copy interlined with his own hand, from
which another copy was made, which ultimately found
its way to the King. Balmerino, having shown his
copy to a Dundee lawyer, was indicted in June, 1634,
1 Bow, p. 366. Kirkton compares this device to that of the Roman
Emperors, who " used in the market place to rear their own image close
beside the image of their heathenish god, to oblige the poor Christians, in
passing by, either to salute the idol in saluting the emperor, or to affront
the prince in neglecting the idol." — Secret and True History of the Church
of Scotland, edited by Sharpe, p. 30.
2 Gardiner, vii. 294. 3 See p. 307.
TWO TYPES OF BISHOPS 355
for publishing a seditious libel ; and in the following
March, after a tedious process, during which the
Puritans had warmly espoused his cause, a jury of his
peers found him guilty, not of publishing the libel, but
of approving and concealing it, by a majority of eight
votes to seven. Balmerino was pardoned after an
imprisonment of thirteen months ; but the malcontents
attributed this rather to the weakness of the prosecution
than to the clemency of the King.
The year 1635 was one of fatal significance in
Charles's reign. In January Archbishop Spottiswoode,
to the great disgust of the nobles, was made Chancellor
—no churchman having held that office since the
Reformation. In March the condemnation of Bal-
merino was followed by the death of Bishop Patrick
Forbes ; in May the Book of Canons, published in
the following year, was authorised by royal warrant ;
and it seems to have been at this time that the first
draft of the Liturgy was prepared under Laud's
direction. These events connect themselves only too
naturally with certain new forces which were now
at work both in Church and State. Charles I.
believed as firmly as Laud himself in that divine
origin of Episcopacy which his father, with all his
love for bishops, had expressly denied ; and corre-
sponding to this change in the character of the
King, we find, not, indeed, two parties within the
episcopate, but two trends of opinion, the one averse
from the Court policy, and the other zealous in its
support. The eight bishops of James's creation who
survived the fall of the hierarchy were Spottiswoode
of St. Andrews, Patrick Lindsay of Glasgow, Guthrie
of Moray, David Lindsay of Edinburgh, Bellenden of
Aberdeen, Graham of Orkney, Abernethy of Caith-
356 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
ness, and Alexander Lindsay of Dunkeld. With the
exception of Spottiswoode in his official capacity as
Primate and Chancellor, of David Lindsay and Bel-
lenden, it would seem that these prelates, without
actually opposing Laud's designs, did as little to
help him as they conveniently could. Graham,
Abernethy, and Alexander Lindsay renounced Epis-
copacy in 1638, and in the Assembly of that year
it was admitted that they had disapproved of the
late innovations.1 Spottiswoode sacrificed his private
judgment to Charles, just as Lord North, during
the last five years of the American war, sacrificed his
to George III. Archbishop Lindsay had even less
sympathy with Laud ; 2 and even as regards the
Bishops of Edinburgh and Aberdeen the evidence is
far from pointing only one way. The former is said
to have insisted on making presbyters only of those
who would first become deacons ; yet in 1636 he
was supposed to have made a stand against "the
Surplice, Cross, Apocrypha, Saints' days, and some
other trash of the English Liturgy";3 and in his
book on the Perth Assembly he speaks contempt-
uously of those fanatics for external order who
regarded any change of opinion in such matters as
a sort of apostasy from the truth.4 Bellenden,
indeed, in a certain blundering fashion did try
1 The Sheriff of Teviotdale pleaded for Abernethy that he would have
resigned his bishopric had he not been deterred by the High Commission.
— Peterkin's Records of the Kirk, p. 173.
2 In 1638, when Laud's policy had provoked a national revolt, the Earl
of Traquair told Charles that Spottiswoode " from the beginning had
withstood these designs, foreseeing how full of danger the executing of
them might prove," and that Archbishop Lindsay " was worse pleased."—
Burnet's Dukes of Hamilton, Oxford edition, p. 43.
3 Baillie, i. 4, 161. 4 Lindsay's Perth Assembly, p. 69
BISHOP MAXWELL 357
to follow in the footsteps of Laud. On the death
of Patrick Forbes he was removed from Dunblane
and the Deanery of the Chapel Royal to Aberdeen,
partly on his own petition, and partly " as one who
did not favour well enough Canterbury's new ways";1
and he seems to have given little satisfaction to his
patron both before his removal and after. In 1634 he
was sharply reprimanded by Laud for having omitted
to read the English Liturgy in the Chapel ; 2 and in
1636 we find Laud writing to Spottiswoode that the
King was "very much displeased with the Bishop
of Aberdeen because he had allowed a fast to be
kept on Sunday in his diocese at a time when His
Majesty was trying to put down all usages unknown
to the Ancient Church." 3
Of the six remaining prelates who owed their pro-
motion to ,Charles, Campbell of the Isles stood entirely
aloof, and Fairley of Argyll was consecrated only in
August, 1637 ; but the other four — Maxwell, Wedder-
burn, Sydserf, and Whitford — were the leaders of what
Baillie calls the " Canterburian faction." Amongst
these Maxwell was by far the most prominent — a man
of great energy, an avowed sacerdotalist, and the true
father of that Episcopal Communion known within its
own narrow limits as " the Church in Scotland." It
was he, as we have seen, who in 1631 first asserted the
divine right of Episcopacy; some three years earlier,
he had become the chief manager of Church business at
Court ; and in 1633 he was made Bishop of Ross. His
ecclesiastical opinions are fully disclosed in his Burthen
of Issachar, one of the two pamphlets to which Baillie
replied in his Historical Vindication ; and though much
1 Baillie, i. 162 ; Heylyn's Laud, p. 323. 2 Baillie, i. 432.
3 Sprott's Scottish Liturgies of the Reign of James VI., p, Ivii.
358 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
must be excused to a deposed and fugitive bishop writing
in 1646, the tract is remarkable for other reasons than the
bitterness of its tone. Maxwell criticises Presbytery from
the true Anglo-Catholic standpoint. The lay eldership,
though he enlarges with good reason on the tyrannical
abuse of its powers, is hateful to him chiefly as a
" sacrilegious intrusion upon sacred Orders." He
denounces the General Assemblies for violating the
rule that jurisdiction is due to churchmen as such
ex vi ordinis ; he is able to prove that " men who were
never in Sacred Orders of Priest or Bishop have been
Moderators " ; and he bewails the neglect of " that old
barbarous, but Christian enough verse — Iteforas Laid,
non est vobis locus yd." On the other hand, he speaks
of Rome and its " cup of abominations " with much
contempt ; and whilst deploring " great losses the
Church had by the Reformation," he thanks Heaven
devoutly for its " good of truth." * Maxwell was warmly
seconded by Sydserf and Whitford, the Bishops of
Brechin and Galloway ; but his principal supporter was
Wedderburn, Bellenden's successor as Dean of the
Chapel and Bishop of Dunblane. It was Wedderburn
who persuaded Laud to have a new Ordinal printed in
1636 — the old one being defective in his opinion,
because it treated deacons as mere laymen, and made
priests so ill that " the very essential words of conferring
orders were left out " ; and it was he also who was
responsible for those portions of the Service-Book which
enabled its opponents to denounce it as more popish
than the Book of Common Prayer.2 We have seen that
these men reflected the intellectual tolerance as well as
the fanatical churchmanship of Laud ; but their generous
1 Burthen of Issachar, pp. 1, 4, 20, 21, 25, 31, 32.
2 Grub, ii. 368, 377.
POPULAR RELIGION 359
breadth of doctrine was hardly less hateful to the
Puritans than their enthusiasm for " Sacred Orders."
Apart from the certainty that it would be denounced
as a concession, or rather as a surrender, to Rome, the
attempt to revive the mysteries of priestcraft had no
chance of success. It was not merely that the Catholic
spirit — the spirit of those for whom the strength and
beauty of Christianity are eternally renewed in its
hallowed rites and symbols — had been extinct in
Scotland for 150 years, but that, since the Reformation,
a new and antagonistic force had arisen in its place.
To the popular religion of the day, Calvinistic and
evangelical to the core, the whole priestly idea was
abhorrent as a gross intrusion on that close personal
intercourse which ought to subsist between the soul and
God ; and even if the bulk of the clergy had been
disposed to relax the old creed — and Arminians, such as
Crighton of Paisley, were the rare exception — there
were some amongst them eager to assert its power.
Under favour of such semi-Puritan bishops as Alexander
Lindsay of Dunkeld, nonconformists, known to be such,
were still occasionally ordained ; many more, admitted
before the Perth Assembly, were permitted to retain
their livings ; and even deposed ministers were at
liberty to preach — which they frequently did at com-
munions— in any parish but their own.1 The extreme
fervour of these divines was more in keeping with the
old order of things than with the new, for the purpose of
inciting their adherents against which they are said to
have held a fast in private every quarter during the
1 Row's Blair, pp. 137-138. Samuel Rutherford, who had been
banished from his parish of Anwoth to Aberdeen and prohibited from
preaching, speaks of himself in June, 1637, as "the first in the kingdom
put to utter silence." — Letters, original edition of 1664, p. 95.
360 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
first eight years of Charles's reign.1 The most remark-
able result of their preaching was the religious epidemic,
associated with the names of David Dickson and John
Livingstone, which broke out at Stewarton in Ayrshire
in 1625, and culminated at Shotts in Clydesdale in
1630. Dickson's pulpit at Irvine was a source of
attraction to the whole countryside ; and the parish-
ioners of Stewarton, who came thither on business, were
wrought up to such a pitch by his market-day sermons
that many of them fell down insensible, and had to be
carried out of church, from which circumstance the
epidemic was known as " the Stewarton sickness," and
its victims as " the daft people of Stewarton." At
Shotts in June, 1630, on the Monday after the com-
munion, Livingstone preached in the open air to an
immense concourse of people, many of whom had been
engaged in devotion the whole previous day and the
whole previous night. These events are remarkable
as one of the earliest indications that the centre of
enthusiasm for Presbytery was shifting from the towns-
people of the east coast to the rude peasantry of the
south-west, whose awakening was to shake to their
foundations both Church and State.
After the communion at Shotts, Livingstone was called
to a parish in the north of Ireland ; and he and Kobert
Blair, the Scottish minister of Bangor, laboured there
with great success till they were deposed by the Bishop
of Down for nonconformity, and for stirring up the
people to " extasies and enthusianisms." 2 From Blair's
autobiography it appears that persons without any sense
of religion were frequently thrown during public worship
into violent convulsions — such, apparently, as attended
1 Guthrie's Memoirs, p. 8.
2 Select Biographies (Wodrow Society), i. 146.
THE BOOK OF CANONS 361
the preaching of Wesley two centuries later ; and these
he attributes to a stratagem of Satan, who thus " play-
ing the ape did . . . counterfeit the work of the
Lord." l From such facts one may easily understand the
connexion between Puritanism and witchcraft — " the
reflection," as it has been called, "by a diseased imagina-
tion of the popular theology."2
The Book of Canons, which had been ratified by
the King in May, 1635, was published in January, 1636.
The Canons are supposed to have been the work of
Bishops Maxwell, Wedderburn, Bellenden, and Sydserf,
revised by Laud and Juxon, Bishop of London;3 and
Juxon did not pun in excess of their probable effect,
when in a letter to Maxwell he said that "perchance at
first" they would "make more noise than all the cannons
in Edinburgh Castle."4 The most unpopular parts of
the Book — if any part of it can be said to have been
more unpopular than another — were the re-enactment in
substance of the Perth Articles;5 the restriction of
ordination to the first week of four months in the year ;
the prohibition of public fasts, except on week days and
with the King's consent, and of extemporary prayer ;
the allowance of confession, with an obligation on the
clergy not to divulge its secrets ; and the direction for
placing a font near the church door, and the communion
table at the upper end of the chancel. The last of the
Canons required them to be subscribed by every
presbyter at his ordination ; and the first denounced
excommunication against all who should afiirm that His
lLife of Blair, p. 89. 2Lecky's Rationalism, i. 139.
3 Grub, ii. 366. 4 Baillie, i. 439.
5 The Articles had been suspended in 1626 as regards ministers who
had been ordained before they became law, and who should abstain from
agitating against them.
362 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
Majesty had not the same authority in causes ecclesi-
astical as the godly Jewish Kings and Christian emperors,
and against all who should impugn the doctrine of the
Church, its rites and ceremonies, its form of worship
contained in the Book of Common Prayer, its episcopal
government under the King, and its form of making
bishops, presbyters, and deacons. The most extra-
ordinary item in this Canon was that which required
the Church to receive without protest a liturgy which
it had never seen ; for the Service-Book, though in
course of preparation, had not yet been published, and
did not appear till more than a year later. But none of
the Canons, not even the first, was so objectionable as
the sanction, or rather want of sanction, under which
the whole were issued. The Book, " contrary to the
usage of the Church in all times and ages," as Laud's
own chaplain admits, l had no authority of any kind but
that of the royal warrant ; and this was the more out-
rageous, because several of the Canons were matters of
civil as well as ecclesiastical law — such, for example, as
the one so justly denounced by Row, 2 which required
both parties to a divorce — the innocent as well . as the
guilty — to be bound over not to marry during each
other's life.
For the origin of the belated Liturgy we must go
back to a time when the necessity, or at least the
expediency, of such a form of prayer was admitted
by all parties in the Church. Knox's Book of Com-
mon Order prefixed to the metrical translation
of the Psalms, and hence commonly known as the
Psalm-Book, had been in use ever since the Refor-
mation. It differed greatly from the Prayer-Book of
1Heylyn's Laud, p. 301. See also Clarendon, i. 148.
2 Row, p. 393.
KNOX'S LITURGY REVISED 363
Edward VI. , which the Reformers had once used, at
least in part, inasmuch as the prayers and con-
fessions were said by the minister alone, who was
always permitted, and in some places expressly en-
joined, to use his own words. A new edition of this
work was agreed to in 1601 — the psalms were to be
revised, and such new prayers added at the sugges-
tion of individual members as the Assembly might
approve. Nothing, however, appears to have been
done in this direction until it was resolved, fifteen
years later, to draw up a new form for the ordinary,
as distinguished from the special, services in Knox's
book. The Aberdeen Assembly of 1616, besides
ratifying a new Confession of Faith, ordained that
"a uniform order of Liturgy or Divine Service"
should be compiled, and also a Book of Canons, for
which purpose two committees were appointed, with
a third and much larger one to revise the labours
of both. A draft of the new Liturgy was finished
within six months; but in 1617 Hewat, the convener
of the liturgical committee, was banished from Edin-
burgh for penning a protestation against the Act,
afterwards withdrawn, affirming the King's jurisdic-
tion in the external government of the Church ;
Erskine, another of the four members, was soon after-
wards deprived for nonconformity ; and thus, by
insisting on the Perth Articles, James not only
alienated the more moderate of the Puritans from
a Liturgy in which these articles would necessarily
be embodied, but sowed the seeds of that general re-
pugnance to all liturgical forms which in the long run
extended even to the Book of Common Order. Hewat's
draft of the Liturgy was now thrown aside. The work
in its new form, embracing both ordinary and special
364 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
services, is said to have been compiled chiefly under
the direction of Bishop Cowper. It was revised by the
King and by Young, the Scottish Dean of Winchester,
and license to print it was granted in June, 1619. By
that time, however, James had probably become alive
to the danger of proceeding further in his ecclesiastical
policy. At the Parliament of 1621 he authorised his
Commissioner to say that, if the Perth Articles were
confirmed, he should bring forward no more innova-
tions ; and if we can believe a somewhat doubtful
story in Hacket's Life of Archbishop Williams, he con-
sented most reluctantly to make a bishop of Laud, who
had twice "assaulted" him with an "ill-fangled plat-
form to make that stubborn Kirk stoop more to the
English pattern." It is probable also that his
sympathies were somewhat divided between Cowper's
Liturgy and the English Book of Common Prayer,
which in 1617 he caused to be read daily in the
Chapel-Royal, and in 1623 in the New College of St.
Andrews.
In 1629, after he had practically disposed of the
tithe question, Charles I. sent for the Liturgy, which
his father, from whatever cause, had refrained from
printing. Maxwell, who brought the book to London,
urged its acceptance in an interview with Laud ; but
Charles on Laud's recommendation decided to discard
the Scottish for the English Liturgy, and according to
Clarendon, it was with a view to introducing the latter
that he took Laud with him to Scotland in 1633. At
Edinburgh, however, he found it impossible to carry
out his design. The bishops represented to him with
great earnestness that to introduce the English Prayer
Book, at a time when the Scots were morbidly sensitive
to the effect on their nationality of the union of the
A NEW LITURGY 365
crowns, would be a perfectly fatal step ; and in this
they all concurred — both the Maxwell party, who
wanted a new form of prayer, and those who, like
Spottiswoode, were anxious, now that Cowper's Liturgy
had been rejected, to retain the old.
Either during this visit or immediately after his
return, Charles decided in favour of a separate liturgy
for Scotland fashioned as nearly as possible on the
Anglican model ; and the bishops, who, with the excep-
tion of Maxwell, had demurred to the King's command
that they should use the English Prayer Book mean-
while in their cathedrals and households, were ordered
in May, 1634, to prepare both a Liturgy and Canons.
In the following August Maxwell was despatched to
Court with the Canons which had been begun, at least,
in the preceding reign ; and these, as we have seen, after
being revised by Laud and Juxon, were ratified by the
King in May, 1635. In April of that year the Bishop
of Ross was again in London. He brought with him
a draft of the Liturgy, with regard to which he was
instructed by his brother bishops to say " that they had
done all that was possible " to meet the views of the
King. Nevertheless Charles sent back the draft with
various " corrections and instructions" signed by him at
the instance of Juxon and Laud ; and in this form
much of the Liturgy had been printed, when in the
beginning of 1636 it was determined once more to make
a fresh start. This appears to have been due to the
vacancy in the see of Aberdeen caused by the death of
Patrick Forbes, which resulted, after some delay, in
Wedderburn succeeding Bellenden as Bishop of Dun-
blane and Dean of the Chapel-Royal. Wedderburn,
though a native of Dundee and a great-grandson of the
author of the " gude and godlie ballates," was to all
366 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
intents an Englishman, being at that time a prebendary
of Ely.1 He entered on his duties at the Chapel in
October, 1635 ; and it was doubtless his influence,
guided by instructions which Heylyn says he carried
with him from Court, that was mainly responsible for
the new edition. After all the labour bestowed upon
it, the Liturgy in its final form was disposed of in a
very summary fashion. In April, 1636, Laud sent
down an English Prayer-Book, into which he and Juxon
had written certain alterations suggested by themselves,
or, with their approval, by the Scottish bishops ; and he
concludes his long letter of the 20th to Wedderburn by
saying that, although the royal warrant prefixed to the
book granted a certain liberty of revision to the Arch-
bishop of St. Andrews and the other bishops, " yet you
must know and inform them that his Majesty, having
viewed all these additions, hopes there will be no need
of change of anything, and will be best pleased with
little or rather no alteration." In spite of this warning,
the bishops availed themselves to some extent of the
permission contained in the King's warrant ; and the
book, thus slightly amended, was published a year later,
in April, 1637.
The Liturgy, which Charles had refused to sanction
in 1629, was professedly a revision of the Book of
Common Order, large extracts from which were in-
corporated therein. It omitted the sign of the cross in
baptism and the use of the ring in marriage ; but in
these and other respects in which it invites comparison
with the English Prayer-Book, Cowper's Liturgy does
not diverge so widely from the latter in a Protestant, as
1 " A Scot by birth, but bred in Cambridge, beneficed in Hampshire,
and made one of the Prebends of Ely by the learned Andrews."—
Heylyn's Laud, p. 323.
LAUD'S SERVICE-BOOK 367
does Laud's in a Catholic direction. What Laud wanted
above all things was to establish one manual of public
worship throughout the two kingdoms ; but, if the Scots
would not have the English Liturgy in form, he was
determined that they should have that, and something
more, in substance. He had no intention of altering
the Prayer- Book without, as he believed, improving it ;
and he was far more alive to the danger of encouraging
the English nonconformists by admitting their objec-
tions than to that of exasperating the Scots by riding
rough shod over theirs.1 Some slight concessions,
indeed, were made to the popular feeling, such, for
example, as the substitution of "Presbyter" for
" Priest," and, in the daily lessons, of canonical for
apocryphal books — portions of the latter being read
only on certain festivals ; but these were far outweighed
by the rubric, which required baptism to be administered
only with consecrated water, and particularly by certain
alterations in the communion service. According to
the statement afterwards made by Laud in his own
defence, it was Wedderburn who suggested the omission
of the words in the present English Prayer-Book, which
at the review of 1559 had been retained, for purposes
of comprehension, in the Second Liturgy of Edward VI.,
in order to balance certain other words suggestive of
transubstantiation, which were then borrowed from the
First. This omission, however, harmonised only too
well with the direction in the rubrics that the holy
table should be placed at the uppermost end of the
chancel — "holy table" being a substitute for "table,"
and also in an opposite sense for Laud's own word
" altar " ; that what remained of the consecrated elements
should be covered " with a fair linen cloth or corporal" ;
1 See Maxwell's instructions to Balcanquhal. — Baillie, i. 444.
368 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
and that the Presbyter should " stand at such a part of
the holy table where he may, with the more ease and
decency, use both his hands "- —this last being suggestive
of the elevation of the Host. When it was reported
to Laud that some bishops, who had never seen the
book till it issued from the press, objected to these
emendations on the Anglican ritual, he asked why they
did not accept the English Liturgy intact when they
had the chance ; and he probably did them no more
than justice when he said that " by their refusal of that,
and their dislike of this, 'tis more than manifest they
would have neither, perhaps none at all, were they left
to themselves." But to the Liturgy, as to the Canons,
the most obvious and the most fatal objection was the
utter want of all ecclesiastical sanction ; and in this
respect it embodied in their last and extremest form the
consequences of that reaction against theocracy, which
had begun fifty years before, when the mass of the
clergy under Craig and Erskine subscribed the " Black
Acts." The Church, which had once claimed to over-
rule at almost every turn the policy of the State, was
now reduced to praying only in the words prescribed
to it by the King ; and Charles and Laud, in attempting
at a time of grave political and religious discontent to
introduce a Liturgy more Catholic in spirit than that
for which Knox's had been adopted, and others had
lately been proposed as substitutes, showed plainly that
their enthusiasm for reforming the Church was quite as
irrational as that of Knox and Melville for establishing
its power. l
1 On the whole subject of Laud's Service-Book and its antecedents, see
Dr. Sprott's Scottish Liturgies of the Reign of James VI., from the truly
admirable introduction to which work the account given in the text
has mainly been drawn.
THE SERVICE-BOOK ENFORCED 369
The intensity of sanction for the change of ritual
was in inverse proportion to its very limited scope. We
have seen that infringers of the Liturgy were threatened
with excommunication more than a year before it was
issued, at a time when even its promoters had not
finally decided what form it should take. When the
book appeared in April, 1637, it was prefaced by way
of frontispiece with a proclamation wrhich had been
published at the market crosses in the preceding
December, requiring all the King's subjects on pain of
rebellion to conform themselves to the new form of
worship, and every parish to buy two copies before
Easter; and this proclamation, not having had the
desired effect, was driven home by another on June 13,
requiring all ministers to purchase their copies within
fifteen days. Maxwell at Fortrose and Wedderburn
at the Chapel-Royal did not wait even for Easter
to introduce the new service — these prelates having no
more to do than to substitute the Scottish Book of
Common Prayer for the English; but the majority of the
bishops, including Wedderburn himself as Bishop of
Dunblane, granted a " breathing time " to their clergy
from the April to the October Synods, which, however,
was cut short at Edinburgh by a royal order appointing
the Service-Book to be read on the third Sunday of
July.
Whether the malcontents availed themselves of the
respite thus accorded to organise as well as to excite
resistance is a point which cannot be precisely deter-
mined. There is nothing to discredit Bishop Guthrie's
statement, corroborated in the main by Spalding, that
the Puritan leaders, lay and clerical, had incited certain
women to make a demonstration against the Service-
Book, except that the Large Declaration is silent on
2A
370 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
this point, and that the women were not unlikely to
undertake such a function of their own accord.
Edinburgh, since the Reformation, had never been
without a tribe of female enthusiasts "of the bangster
Amazon kind," derided by King James on one occasion
as "the holy sisters." It was women of this class who
had hooted and stormed at Queen Mary after her
surrender at Carberry Hill,1 who had mobbed Arch-
bishop Montgomery, who had caused a proclamation to
be issued in defence of Archbishop Adam son,2 and who
in 1587 had raised a commotion in St. Giles's, when
King James ordered the usurping Cowper to come out
of the pulpit.
Fifty years had elapsed since this last incident, when
in the same church of St. Giles the reading of the
" Popish-English-Scottish-Mass-Service Book," as Row
calls it, provoked a similar, but much more serious
tumult. As soon as Dean Hanna, in presence of the
Bishop of Edinburgh, the Chancellor and other
magnates, had begun to read, a tremendous outcry
arose amongst the women, some cursing the Dean, and
some the Bishop, as " beastly belly-god," " crafty fox,"
" ill-hanged thief," others tearing their hair, and shriek-
ing that the Mass was entered in and Baal set up anew.
One at least of the " she-zealots" threw a stool at the
Bishop's head ; another dashed her Bible in the face of
a young man who was punctuating "that new composed
comedy " with devout amens ; and a third is specially
commended for having rebuked a woman with some
sense of humour — "one of Ishmael's mocking daughters"
1 " The women be most furious and impudent against her, and yet the
men be mad enough." — Throckmorton to Elizabeth ; Foreign Calendar,
1566-68, No. 1447.
2M'Crie's Melville, i. 349.
A ' NO-POPERY ' RIOT 371
—by exclaiming in a loud voice, " Woe be to those that
laugh when Zion mourns." The rioters were removed
without much difficulty, many of them in horror of such
idolatry being very anxious to get out ; but they did
their best to obstruct the remainder of the service by
smashing the windows and thundering at the doors.
Bishop Lindsay, on issuing from the church, was set
upon by a mob of these " zealous and holy women," l
who pursued him with mud and curses ; a door at
which he sought refuge was shut in his face ; and but
for the Earl of Wemyss, who sent his servants to protect
him, he would hardly have escaped with his life. The
exclusion of the " devouter sex " resulted in the Liturgy
being read without interruption in the afternoon ; but
the unfortunate Bishop was freely pelted with stones
as he drove home through the crowded streets in the
Earl of Roxburgh's coach. In the Grey friars' Church
the reception of the Liturgy, though less violent, was
quite as unfavourable; and similar ebullitions of rage
soon occurred elsewhere. The women of Glasgow
warned one minister that, if he defended the book in his
sermon, they would drag him out of the pulpit ; and
another, who had preached in its favour before the
diocesan synod, was waylaid in the dark by several
hundreds of them, and beaten most unmercifully both
with fists and cudgels.2
A proclamation was issued at Edinburgh on the day
after the riot prohibiting all demonstrations against the
bishops and the Service-Book on pain of death ; but,
1 Row's Blair, p. 150.
2 Contemporary accounts of the St. Giles's riot are to be found in
Row, Spalding, Gordon, the Large Declaration, and the Appendix to
Kothes's Relation (Bannatyne edition) — the last being a particularly
brutal and obscene account.
372 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
beyond the apprehension of a few persons who were
soon released, nothing was done to bring the offenders
to trial. On July 29, on the motion of Archbishop
Spottiswoode, it was decided that both the old Prayer-
Book and the new should be suspended till the King's
pleasure was known ; and a month later, on the petition
of three Fifeshire ministers, one of whom was Alexander
Henderson, the proclamation prefixed to the Liturgy
was practically annulled by an Act of Council limiting
it to the buying, as distinct from the reading, of the
book.
The weakness of the Council was due mainly to its
want of union. The bishops distrusted the lay lords,
particularly the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Traquair,
who had shown his indifference, if not his enmity, to
the Service-Book by going out of town the day before
it was read ; l and they could not count even on several
of their own order, who objected to a new form of
worship introduced without their consent. The lay
lords, on the other hand, were jealous of the bishops —
especially of the nine, mostly High Churchmen, who
had seats in the Council, and who, without waiting
for their concurrence, had sent off an express to the
King immediately after the riot. On August 25 the
Council wrote to the King, suggesting that he should
select some persons of note to confer with him in
London ; and Traquair, in a letter to the Marquis of
Hamilton, exhorted him to use his influence with Charles
that only bishops "of the wisest and most calm disposi-
tions " should be sent for ; " for certainly some of the
leading men amongst them are so violent and forward,
1 Heylyn, Guthrie, and Spalding assert that Traquair was in league
with the opposition — a charge which is indignantly repudiated by
Clarendon.
I
OBSTINACY OF THE KING 373
and many times without ground or good judgment, that
their want of right understanding how to compass busi-
ness of this nature and weight does often breed us many
difficulties." l Charles, however, was as reckless of
opposition in the matter of the Liturgy as his father
had been in that of the Perth Articles, and the prelates
he favoured most were just those whom the Lord
Treasurer abhorred. He objected to the proposed
deputation as likely to make " a needless noise " ; he
found fault with the suspension of the Liturgy, ordered
the Council to establish it in Edinburgh, and every
bishop, as Maxwell and Wedderburn had done, in his
own diocese, and none but conformists to be chosen as
magistrates in burghs.2 When the Council met on
September 20 to consider this reply to their letter,
they found themselves besieged by a great concourse of
nobles, lairds, and ministers, presenting no fewer than
sixty-nine petitions against the Service-Book from all
parts of the Lowlands. They sent up three of these
petitions and a list of the rest with the Duke of
Lennox, who happened to be returning to Court,
entreating him to explain the true state of affairs ; and
they promised to communicate the King's answer to the
petitioners or "supplicants" on October 17.
When that day came, and with it, owing to the com-
pletion of harvest, a greater crowd than before, the
King's answer was announced in the shape of three pro-
clamations, one postponing an answer to the petitioners
till they should be in a more peaceable mood, and
ordering them all to leave Edinburgh within twenty-four
hours, another removing the law courts from Edinburgh
to Linlithgow, and a third suppressing a book recently
published against " the English-Popish Ceremonies."
1 Burnet's Dukes of Hamilton, p. 40. 2 Balfour's Annals, ii. 232-233.
374 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
The leading petitioners were at no loss whom to hold
responsible for these offensive edicts which were pub-
lished towards evening at the Cross ; and four of them—
Lords Balmerino and Loudoun, Dickson and Henderson
— were at work nearly all night on a supplication
denouncing the bishops as the true authors and illegal
enforcers of the Liturgy and Book of Canons, and
craving that they should be removed from the Council
as interested parties till these grievances had been tried.
When this petition was presented next morning for
signature, it was subscribed at once by some twenty-
four nobles and between two and three hundred lairds ;
and amongst the ministers its reception was hardly less
favourable, although many of these disliked the Liturgy
without at all disapproving of bishops. When Baillie
came into the ministers' room late in the afternoon, he
found a document "going fast" round, of which several
of those who had signed it could give no account ; and
he himself was induced to sign the petition, though
he thought its framers " much more happy than
wise," on an assurance that it militated against the
bishops only in so far as they were the authors of
the obnoxious Prayer-Book.1
Meanwhile the proclamations of the previous day
had created a prodigious ferment in the town — the
citizens being no more disposed to submit quietly to
the second proclamation than the petitioners from
the country to obey the first. Bishop Sydserf of
Galloway, who was suspected of having a crucifix in
his cabinet and another under his dress, was pursued
by some 300 women to the Council House, which he
gained only through the exertions of several friends,
who "hurled him in at the door"; the Earls of
1 Baillie, i. 35, 36.
ANOTHER ' NO-POPERY ' RIOT 375
Traquair and Wigtown, after having forced their way
to his assistance, were unable to extricate either the
Bishop or themselves ; and the magistrates, on receipt
of an urgent message from the captives representing
their plight, sent back word that they, too, were
besieged by the rioters, who had threatened to kill
them all, unless they signed a petition against the
Service- Book. The two earls contrived at last to
make their way in person to the Provost, who could
only advise them to return whence they came, and
not to venture out till the tumult was quelled. On
the way back — their first attempt to get through
having entirely failed — Traquair was thrown down,
raised with great difficulty by his friends, and his
white staff broken ; and thus, " without hat or cloak,
like a notorious malefactor," he was washed up by
the mob against the Council House door, behind
which the besieged Bishop was still listening in terror
to the thunder of the streets. The Provost arrived
soon afterwards, confessing his utter inability to con-
trol the people ; and the refugees had then no
alternative but to have recourse to some of the leading
petitioners, under whose protection they were piloted
with no little difficulty to their homes, the women still
railing at Sydserf with unabated vigour.1
This second riot, 2 which is said to have been headed
by " the best sort of citizens," was far more serious than
the first ; and it was followed by important, though less
conspicuous results. At the meeting of Privy Council
1 Large Declaration, pp. 35-38, copied almost verbatim by Gordon ;
Rothes, pp. 15, 20 ; Guthrie, pp. 24-25.
2 Mr. Gardiner, contrary to the Large Declaration, calls this the third
riot ; but the disturbance of September 25, which he counts as one, seems
hardly worthy of the name.
376 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
in the afternoon, the petitioners obtained permission to
postpone their departure for other twenty-four hours ;
and, though their complaint against the bishops was
rejected as contrary to the late proclamation, they were
shown how to obtain for themselves a far more important
boon. Bishop Sydserf, and the Provost and Clerk- Regi-
ster, Sir John Hay,1 complained of the resort of nobles
and gentry in such numbers to Edinburgh as the cause
of the late tumult; and, in order to provide against such
disturbances in future, they proposed that the supplicants
should choose certain commissioners to treat with the
Council in name of the rest. With the sanction of Sir
Thomas Hope, a zealous Puritan, who had been appointed
Lord Advocate in 1626 on account of his knowledge of
tithes, vainly opposed by Traquair, the petitioners pro-
ceeded to act on this suggestion at their next meeting on
November 15 ; and the Commissioners chosen on that
occasion were the forerunners of the permanent body
known as the Tables, or Green Tables, in allusion to the
table covered with green cloth at which each of the
committees sat, consisting respectively of four nobles,
four lairds, four burgesses, and four ministers.2 Charles
had little reason to thank his Advocate for securing him
against rioters at the expense of converting rioters into
rebels — particularly as he could not hope to overpower
the organisation of the Tables as his father had over-
powered that of the Commissioners of Assembly in
1597. The nobles, who as late as the Parliament of 1621
1 Burton appears not to know that the Clerk -Register and the Provost
were one and the same person ; and he shows great ignorance of Sir John
Hay's career, when he describes him as " a neutral figure in the confusions
of the time." Balfour calls Hay " a slave to the bishops and court " ; and
in the Large Declaration he and Sir Robert Spottiswoode, the Primate's
son, are mentioned as " sworn enemies " to the Covenant.
2Rothes, pp. 17, 27 ; Baillie, i. 38-40.
WITHDRAWAL OF THE BISHOPS 377
had turned the scale in favour of the Perth Articles, were
now on the popular side; the craftsmen of Edinbugh had
waxed cold in their loyalty to a non-resident king ; and
the ecclesiastical system which Charles upheld had
become more hateful to the nation than that which
James VI. had successfully opposed.
It would appear that the petitioners did not at first
realise the full advantage they had gained ; for Baillie
confesses that their resolution to elect Commissioners
was merely an excuse for their returning in as great
a number as possible to prosecute their suit against the
bishops.1 The Council, however, was much less concerned
about the bishops than about the new organisation which
had received a certificate of legality from Sir Thomas
Hope ; and in subsequent encounters they strove hard
to split up the Commissioners by inducing them to
petition separately, according to their several groups.
Foiled in this, they sought privately to have the petition
so amended that it should apply rather to some bishops
alleged to be at fault than to the whole order ; and when
this device also failed, they fairly ran away from their
tormentors by going out at one door of the Council-
House, whilst the Commissioners with a protestation
were waiting for them at the other. Meanwhile,
however, in order to avoid prejudicing their right by
yielding to the declinature which they knew the
petitioners were prepared to present against them, the
bishops had deemed it prudent to retire ; 2 and the lay
councillors are said to have adroitly hastened their
departure by urging it as essential to their personal
safety.3 On December 19, their agents having this
time beset both doors, the Commissioners were promised
a full hearing before the Council ; and on the 21st,
1 Baillie, i. 39. 2 Ibid. p. 45. 3 Gordon, i. 30.
378 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
after Lord Loudoun had presented the supplication and
declinature, and he and two ministers had made speeches
in their support, the Council by a formal Act resolved
to lay the whole matter before the King.
During all these five months Charles had made no
serious effort to grapple with the growth of discontent
in Scotland, which from the original grievance of the
Prayer-Book had now extended to the Book of Canons,
the High Commission, and the civil rights of bishops.
After the riot of October 18 Traquair had com-
plained bitterly of " the delay in taking some certain
and resolved course," and, as he was not permitted
to offer his advice in person, had entreated Hamilton
" for God's cause" to prevail upon the King to decide in
time, and to state clearly what he wished to be done.1
At last, in the beginning of 1638, the Lord Treasurer
obtained leave to come up to Court ; and after he had
told Charles plainly that he must either withdraw the
Liturgy or support it with an army of 40,000 men,2
he was sent back, to his intense disgust, with another of
those ridiculous proclamations which proclaimed nothing
more loudly than the utter incapacity of the King. A
few weeks before, the malcontents had been delighted to
hear, as justifying their complaint against the bishops,
that Charles had never intended to do anything in
religion contrary to the laws of the realm. They were
now assured that he was entirely responsible for the
Liturgy which they had supposed to be the work of the
bishops, and that this book, instead of being a preparative
for popery, would prove a ready means to " beat out all
superstition," and to maintain religion as at present
professed. With this assurance and a pardon for their
1 Hardwicke, State Papers, ii. 96, 97.
2 Venetian Transcripts, quoted by Gardiner, viii. 327.
FORMATION OF THE TABLES 379
past offences as done out of " preposterous zeal," they
were required to disperse on pain of treason, and not to
re-assemble without the Council's consent.1 The
petitioners, as soon as some of them had discovered the
purport of this proclamation, resolved to protest against
it ; and Traquair, after having tried in vain to dissuade
them, was at his wit's end how to get it published
without an affront to the King. On February 19
he and Lord Roxburgh rode out of Edinburgh at
two in the morning, with a view to outwitting their
opponents at Stirling ; but Lord Lindsay and the
Earl of Home, hearing of their departure, two hours
later, from one of Traquair's footmen, overtook them
on the road, and were ready with their protest
when the proclamation was read. At Linlithgow
and Edinburgh the same formality was observed ;
and at Edinburgh the royal mandate is said to
have been received "with jeering and laughter" by
the crowd.2
The measures now adopted by the petitioners showed
plainly that they were alive to the responsibility they
had incurred by repudiating the King's commands as a
mere Act of Council inspired by their enemies the
bishops. On February 22, the day of the proclamation
at Edinburgh, they despatched an urgent appeal to " all
considerable persons" who still held aloof, as well as a
letter of information to be circulated by their friends
throughout the country ; and on the same day the
temporary committees, through which the Commis-
sioners had been wont to deal with the Council, were
superseded or supplemented — for the point is somewhat
obscure — by the permanent executive known as the
1 Rothes, pp. 48, 87.
2 Large Declaration, p. 47.
380 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
Tables.1 As a pledge of union against the Council — for
Traquair was still labouring to dissolve their organisa-
tion into its component groups, and some of the bishops
had undertaken to satisfy those who would be content
with the withdrawal of the Liturgy and Canons and a
reform of the High Commission — the Tables at once
resolved to renew the Covenant or Negative Confession
drawn up in 1581 with a view to exposing the hypocrisy
of the Jesuit Duke of Lennox,2 and to add their own
grievances, by way of postscript, to the long list of
papal abominations therein exhaustively enumerated
and condemned. The leaders of the movement no
doubt foresaw that this bond would not only deeply
pledge all moderate Episcopalians who could be
induced to subscribe, but would appeal with irre-
sistible force to the great multitude of uneducated
fanatics, whose " whole religion," in the words
unjustly applied by Clarendon to the Scottish nation,
consisted "in an entire detestation of popery, in
believing the Pope to be Antichrist, and hating per-
fectly the persons of all papists, and I doubt all others
who did not hate them." 3 To retain the Episcopalians,
or those of the party who still professed to be such,
some slight concessions were made. Baillie obtained
the softening of one passage which seemed to imply the
lawfulness of armed resistance, and at his request
another, contrary to its general tenor, was so amended
1 Gordon, who agrees with Row in ascribing the formation of the Tables
to the preceding November, says that a fifth Table, consisting of delegates
from the other four, was now formed. The Large Declaration first
mentions the Tables under this date. Mr. Gardiner's is probably the true
explanation — that commissioners were appointed in November, that these
acted through committees, and that the committee appointed on February
22 was the first appointed for more than a special purpose.
2 See p. 222. 3 Clarendon, i. 149.
THE COVENANT SIGNED 381
that the subscriber was bound only to abstain from
practising " novations " of worship, and from approving
" the corruptions of the public government of the kirk "
until these had been tried and allowed in Assembly and
Parliament.1 To those who objected that the Perth
Articles had been established both by Assembly and
Parliament, it was answered that " the reason of the law
was the force of the law," and that the reason alleged
for the Act of Perth was that there was no longer any
fear of superstition and idolatry, which now, to all
appearance, were more rampant than ever.2 Some three
or four ministers of Angus, that ancient stronghold of
Episcopacy, loyally refused to act contrary to their
ordination vows;3 but the great majority of the
ministers then in Edinburgh — nearly three hundred in
number — subscribed the Covenant on the first of March,
1638. "Many thousands" of nobles and lairds had
subscribed on the previous day ; the burgesses sub-
scribed with the ministers ; and during the next two
months adherents were being enrolled in almost every
Lowland parish.
According to the original intention of its promoters,
the Covenant was to be offered only to communicants,
who might get a notary to sign for them, if they were
unable to write ; but in practice it was offered to all
who had any wish to subscribe, and to almost all,
except Catholics, who had none. Rothes euphemistically
says that " this was an oath whereto none were to be
compelled, but it was expected all would willingly
condescend." Four pages further on, he records a
1 Baillie, i. 53. The retention of the word " allowed " shows that
" corruptions of the public government of the kirk " had been substituted
for " Episcopacy."
2 Rothes, p. 73. 3 Baillie, i. 53.
382 THE NATIONAL COVENANT, 1625-1638
resolution of the nobles that those ministers who dis-
appointed this expectation should " be discountenanced
and dishaunted by them all, and all they could per-
suade";1 and the practice of making Covenanters only
of communicants was soon exchanged for that of denying
communion to those who would not take the Covenant.
Such compulsion, however, amounting in some cases to
actual violence, was not often needed ; for Episcopalians
more scrupulous than Baillie were allowed to subscribe
with a reservation of Episcopacy and the Perth Articles ;
the loyalists in general were utterly disheartened by
what one of them calls the " long boggling and irreso-
lution of the King ; 2 and the frenzy of the populace was
an argument even with the boldest not to thwart its
humour. Never had there been before, never has there
been since, such an astounding exhibition of the perfer-
vidum ingenium Scotorum. Nobles and lairds carried
the Covenant with them for signature wherever they
went ; whole congregations swore to maintain it with
uplifted hands ; and all alike, men, women, and mere
children, were admitted to the oath. Many subscribed
with tears, cursing themselves to all eternity if they
should prove unfaithful to their vow ; and some even
insisted on signing with their blood. The churches of
Covenanting ministers were crowded to overflowing ;
and some female enthusiasts, in order to attest their
Protestantism by sitting at communion, are said to have
kept their seats from Friday to Sunday.3
1 Eothes, pp. 75, 79, 80.
2 Lord Hailes's Memorials of the Reign of Charles L, p. 25 — one of
three letters written in a singularly polished and incisive style by a person
calling himself John de Maria to a person unknown. Napier has
disproved Lord Hailes's conjecture that this person was the Duke of
Lennox. — Memorials of Montrose and His Times, i. 248, note.
3 Gordon, i. 45, 46 ; Large Declaration, p. 69.
CHAPTER XII.
PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638.
THE Puritan movement, which had adopted the
Covenant as its symbol, was in several respects the
counterpart of that which had resulted, nearly eighty
years earlier, in the overthrow of the papal power.
Professing their fidelity to an absentee sovereign,
the Covenanters1 appealed from the King's Council
to the King, just as the Reformers had appealed
from the Queen Regent to the Queen ; and the great
majority of the nobles resisted Charles as repre-
sented by his Council from the same motives which
had led their ancestors to bear arms against Mary of
Lorraine. Amongst the Covenanting peers, as amongst
the Lords of the Congregation, there were some whose
zeal for religion was not wholly assumed. The Earls
of Rothes and Eglinton, Lords Balmerino, Tester,
Burleigh, and Cowper, influenced perhaps to some
extent by jealousy of the bishops, had opposed the
ratification of the Perth Articles in the Parliament
of 1621 ; and others may very well have resented the
King's pretensions to dispose at pleasure of the ritual
1 " A name, which they are not ashamed of, although their adversaries
have put it upon them."— Anonymous letter in Hailes's Memorials, p. 70.
384 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
and discipline of the Church. It was mainly, how-
ever, through the votes of the nobility that the Perth
Articles had passed into law ; Rothes and Loudoun
had been despatched to Court to represent the
grievances of the tithe-owners in 1626 ; and Charles
could point very plausibly to the fact that the
leaders of the Covenanters were the same men who
had resisted the commutation of tithes and had dis-
played their "tlrwarteous humour" during his visit
to Scotland in 1633. We have seen that the race
of lay commendators had looked with disfavour on
the efforts of the last Catholic primate to anticipate
revolution by reform ; and Charles I.'s Act of Revo-
cation was a still more direct challenge to those
who, as Lords of Erection, had engrossed the abbey
lands. The nobles suspected Charles, even after
their grants had been confirmed to them anew, of
an intention to complete the hierarchy by adding
abbots to bishops, probably with a view to reviving
what had once been the ecclesiastical wing of the
Court of Session ; and considerable alarm was excited
amongst them in 1636 by the presentation, which,
however, never took effect, of a minister named Lear-
month to the abbacy of Lindores.1
But, if in these respects the Protestant and the
Puritan revolutions may be said to correspond, there
are others in which they entirely disagree. The
revolt of Charles's reign was a popular movement
headed by the nobles, that of Mary's an aristocratic
movement identified for purposes of its own with a small
religious sect. The mob, indeed, played a considerable
part in both revolutions ; but the " rascal multitude "
of Knox's day, neither Papist nor Protestant, was as
1 Baillie, i. 6 ; Row, p. 389 ; Bui-net's Dukes of Hamilton, p. 38.
NOT A PATRIOTIC MOVEMENT 385
ready to set up a Lord of Misrule or to resist the
carting of an adulterer as to practise iconoclasm at
the expense of the monks. In the reign of Charles
the populace had absorbed the worst elements of
that Protestantism which had once been confined to
"the nobility and others of borough and town" ;x and
Scotland in its Covenanting frenzy of 1638 presents a
strange contrast to the apathetic Scotland of 1559,
when "men had no will to hazard," when "the most
part apparently took no great care of God's word,"
and when Randolph almost despaired of his mission
amongst a people with " so little love to God or zeal
to their country." 2
We have seen how the politics of the Reformation
encroached on its religion, and how the men, who had
taken up arms on behalf of the new faith, were content
to wield them in defence of the national honour. No
such change of policy occurred in 1638;3 but this in
itself is no argument against the common view that the
success of the Covenant was due to a great outburst
of patriotic feeling. Even if Luther or Calvin had been
a name to conjure with in Scotland, the Reformers
would still have been disposed to magnify the French
1 It is thus that the English Government sums up the forces of Pro-
testantism in Scotland in March, 1661. — Foreign Calendar, 1561-1562,
No. 57.
2 See pp. 67, 70.
3 In the letter of appeal to Louis XIII. which Charles discovered in
1639, the Covenanters did attempt for once to shift the Covenant from
a religious to a political basis. It is curious to find them in this letter
complaining of English aggression to France, just as the Reformers had
complained of French aggression to England ; and it seems that about the
same time Richelieu, like a second Cecil, was successfully impressing on
Sir Robert Murray, one of the Scotsmen at the French Court, that the
independence as well as the religion of his country was at stake. —
Gordon's Britane's Distemper, p. 6.
2B
386 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
design of conquest as the only thing that was at all
likely to bring Elizabeth to their side, whereas the
Covenanters, looking mainly to the English Puritans,
had every inducement to keep religion in the front. It
would seem, however, that the difference in this respect
between the Protestant and the Puritan revolutions is
due simply to the fact that the integrity of the kingdom
was in grave danger in 1559 and was in no danger at
all in 1638. From nothing that Charles ever did could
it be supposed that he harboured a design against the
liberties of his native country, for which, according to
Lord Clarendon, he had the most jealous regard. The
understanding with the English Puritans, which is said
to have been a great inducement with many to sign the
Covenant,1 would have sufficed of itself to prevent
any strong anti-English feeling ; and if such a feeling
existed, it is strange that we find no trace of it in the
temper of the mob. The truth is that in 1638 the
4 'non-popery" agitation was sufficient to swallow up every
other issue ; and it was not till that agitation had burned
itself out, fifty years later, that the nation awoke to the
wider destiny, which had revealed itself at the Reforma-
tion to the greatest Scotsman of the age.
So long as no concessions were made by the King,
the discontent in Scotland needed only to be organ-
ised ; and the leaders, especially Rothes and Henderson,
were quite equal to the task. John Leslie, sixth Earl of
Rothes, was a man of the most genial disposition,
sprightly, affable, and facetious in manner, a prodigious
talker, popular alike with zealots, politicians, and lovers
of pleasure, and so little of a Puritan at heart that
Clarendon describes him as " very free and amorous,
'and unrestrained in his discourse by any scruples of
1 Gordon, i. 48.
HENDERSON AND JOHNSTON 387
religion, which he only put on when the part he had to
act required it, and then no man could appear more
conscientiously transported." Alexander Henderson,
minister of Leuchars in Fife, had distinguished himself
by his opposition to the Perth Articles in the Assembly
of 1618 ; and he was one of many ministers, such as
Scot and Row, the Presbyterian annalists, Cant, Dickson,
Porteous, and Sommerville, who, though they never con-
formed and never ceased to agitate against the hierarchy,
were suffered, in most cases unmolested, to retain their
livings. About 1630 he is said to have superseded Scot
as the leader of the Puritan party ; l and after the
outbreak of the troubles he was the foremost of a trium-
virate completed by Dickson and Cant, and characterised
by a loyalist divine as the Apostles of the Covenant.
Henderson, however, unlike Knox and Melville, was
less of an apostle than a man of affairs — temperate in
speech, sagacious and practical ; and his biographer
truly says that he was the only one of the three who
combined the suaviter in modo with thefortiter in re.
The most extreme man among the Covenanters was
the young advocate, Johnston of Warriston, the writer
of all their manifestoes and protestations, and joint
author with Henderson of the Covenant itself. Johnston,
though a shrewd lawyer, was a fanatic of the purest type.
His nephew Burnet describes him as a man of intense
application, who could seldom sleep for more than three
hours in the twenty-four, a fluent and powerful speaker,
so copiously devout that he would often pray in his
family for two hours at a stretch, and " out of measure
zealous" for the Covenant, which he regarded "as the
setting of Christ on his throne." 2
1 Alton's Life of Henderson, pp. 104-106.
2 History of His Own Time, i. 49, 50.
388 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
If the protest at Stirling had been the declaration, the
Covenant was virtually the first act, of war ; for the
oath, which the petitioners were exacting from the
King's subjects, was a clear violation of his sovereign
rights, and to the bond in the original Covenant in
defence of the King they had added another in de-
fence of themselves against all persons whatsoever.
On the first of March, when the ministers and
burgesses were signing the Covenant at Edinburgh,
the Privy Council met at Stirling ; and after three
days' discussion they sent the Justice- Clerk, Sir John
Hamilton, to Court with instructions, endorsed by
Spottiswoode and four other bishops, to represent to
the King their unanimous opinion that "the general
combustions in the country " were due to the Liturgy,
Book of Canons, and High Commission, and to " the
introduction thereof contrary to or without warrant
of the laws of the kingdom." 1 Charles, however, was
not prepared even yet to admit, or at all events to
act upon, this half-truth, which had once been the
whole ; and whilst he added two more months to the
seven already wasted, the Covenanters of both sexes
lost no opportunity of asserting their power. Recusant
ministers were deprived of their stipends, threatened
with violence, and in some cases cruelly ill-used.
One minister was assaulted by the women of Edin-
burgh for referring to the Virgin Mary in terms
which Baillie believed to have been perfectly correct ;
another at Torphichen, on the Sunday after his people
had subscribed the Covenant, was set upon in
church, soundly beaten, and his gown torn into rags;
similar outrages occurred at Lanark, Markinch, and
Kirkmichael ; and Bishop Sydserf, after having
1 Buriiet, pp. 44-46.
PERSECUTION OF LOYALISTS 389
narrowly escaped violence at Stirling, was stoned
on his way to Edinburgh by the "wives of Falkirk."
Loyalists of good family were debarred from the
communion, those of humble rank imprisoned or set
in the stocks. In the west the inns are said to have
been closed against all who were not Covenanters,
and the list of those who had subscribed in each
shire was soon supplemented by another list of those
who had not. The presbyteries were incited or com-
pelled to get rid of non-juring moderators, to grant
collation to livings without consulting the bishop, to
depose ministers who refused to read the Covenant,
or where they were not deposed, to supersede them
by giving them Puritan colleagues. Most of the
ministers thus intruded on the Church were Presby-
terians of the straitest sect — men who had been
banished to Ireland for nonconformity and driven
out of it for the same cause ; and Traquair com-
plained to Hamilton that these fanatics were inflam-
ing the people to madness with their " foolish, seditious
doctrine." l
Charles had a difficult part to play; for whatever con-
cessions he granted to the Scottish Puritans might be
demanded by the English, and in view of the discontent
at home, it might be as hard for him to wage war in
such a cause as it now was to avert it. The charge
against Charles is not that he succumbed to these
difficulties, which might easily have overpowered a far
stronger king, but that he shut his eyes to them, and
never really tried to grapple with them at all. For the
last nine months he had steadily refused to make any
concessions to men who were continually demanding
1 Hardwicke State Papers, ii. 107 ; Baillie, i. 51, 76 ; Hailes's Memorials,
pp. 25-27 ; Burnet, pp. 53-54.
390 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
more ; and this policy would at least have been
intelligible, if, as soon as the troubles in Scotland became
serious, he had prepared for the worst. The. wiser course
would doubtless have been to have withdrawn the
Liturgy, or at all events to have promised not to
re-introduce it without the consent of the Church.
When the trouble began, in addition to the few who
were really in sympathy with Laud, there was a large
party amongst the ministers, described by Baillie as
" the most and most considerable of all the clergy of
Scotland," l who had no objection to Episcopacy and
the Perth Articles, and who would not have objected
even to the Liturgy in the modified form in which alone
it could have been legally introduced. The misfortune
was that Charles did not attempt to win, or rather to
retain, this class, until through his own obstinacy and
the terrorism exercised by the Covenanters it had almost
ceased to exist.
At length, wearied of passive resistance, Charles
realised the necessity of doing something, which, if it
did not secure peace, would at least give him time to
prepare for war. He resolved to negotiate ; and the
bishops having contrived to impair Traquair's credit
without adding anything to their own, the Marquis of
Hamilton, much against his will, was entrusted with the
task. Hamilton as Commissioner left London, towards
the end of May, with two proclamations and a royal
warrant, authorising him to use either, and in certain
circumstances to issue a third. The Canons, the Liturgy,
and the High Commission were not to be withdrawn ;
but the Commissioner was to announce that the first two
would not be pressed, except in "a fair and legal way,"
and that the last would be so reformed that it should
1 Letters, i. 36.
HAMILTON'S MISSION 391
not infringe the laws or be just cause of complaint.
After these assurances, he might either require the
Covenanters to abjure their bond and to surrender all
copies of it to the Council, according to the first pro-
clamation, or he might exhort them in general terms to
obedience, according to the second ; but, if he took the
latter course, and the Covenant was not voluntarily
given up within six weeks, then he was to issue the
third proclamation, declaring the Covenanters traitors,
unless they made full submission within eight days.1
By his own confession Hamilton had " no hope in the
world of doing good without coming to blows " ; 2 and
he had travelled no further than Berwick when he
assured the King that, from all he could learn, his
subjects would yield to no argument but force. At
Edinburgh, which he entered on June 7 between two
rows of supplicants a mile and a half long, the outlook
was still more discouraging. The Covenanters, whilst
freely importing weapons from abroad, had set a watch
round the castle to prevent its receiving a ship-load of
arms ; they demanded the abolition of the Perth Articles
and of Episcopacy in all but name ; and if Charles would
not summon a Parliament for this purpose, they talked
of summoning one themselves.3 So little disposed were
they to renounce the Covenant that they were pressing
it on the Lords of Session, and had even solicited the
King's Commissioner to subscribe. When Hamilton,
half in jest, ventured to suggest that they should
dissolve the league, Rothes told him that there was not
one of them who would not rather quit his life — he
himself " would not wish to be King over so many
man-sworn dogs," and it would be much to His Majesty's
1 Burnet, pp. 56-58 ; Hamilton Papers, p. 2.
2 Gardiner, viii. 341. 3 Hamilton Papers, p. 6.
392 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
advantage, if his subjects in England and Ireland
were to subscribe the same bond.1
In these circumstances, even before he arrived at
Edinburgh, Hamilton had resolved to " divide " the pro-
clamation, that is, apparently, to publish the second and
least offensive form without following it up with the
third ; but, in the vain hope of dissuading the Coven-
anters from their purpose of protesting, he delayed its
publication from day to day. Charles's chief anxiety
now was to stave off the inevitable conflict, which, his
Commissioner assured him, would be "a difficult work
and bloody " ; and with this view he told Hamilton not
to issue the third proclamation, even though the six
weeks had elapsed, until he should hear from himself
that the fleet had sailed for Scotland. Hamilton, how-
ever, was so "pressed beyond expression " with demands
for an Assembly and Parliament that matters threatened
to come to a crisis much sooner than his master desired.
He was anxious on any pretext to get the swarm of
petitioners out of Edinburgh ; and towards the end of
June, driven to his "last shifts," he promised to lay their
demands in person before the King, on condition that
they dispersed to their homes and did not re-assemble
before his return in the beginning of August. Hamilton
had already started for Court, when he received a
despatch from Charles, requiring him to publish the
second proclamation, extended in such a wTay as to
suggest some vague hope of an Assembly and Parlia-
ment ; and this he did at Edinburgh on July 4. The
Covenanters replied with a protestation, in which they
claimed the right, in the last resort, to hold an Assembly
on their own authority ; and next day the majority of
those who had signed the Act of Council approving the
1 Eothes, pp. 117, 122, 151* 159.
MONTROSE AS A COVENANTER 393
proclamation, professed such remorse for what they had
done that Hamilton, in order to prevent them subscrib-
ing the Covenant, was feign to tear up the Act before
their eyes.1
Whilst the Commissioner was absent in England, the
Covenanters sent some of their number to proselytise
in Aberdeen, where the King's cause was upheld by the
group of learned divines formed by Bishop Patrick
Forbes, and now presided over by his son, Dr. John
Forbes of Corse. The deputation was headed by one who
stands forth in the full stature of greatness amongst the
small shadowy figures of that bustling time. In this
his twenty-third year James Graham, Earl and future
Marquis of Montrose, was in his first enthusiasm for the
Covenant. Baillie refers to him as having been won
over by " the canniness of Kothes " ; 2 and his conduct
may have been influenced by the cold reception which
Hamilton, on his return from France, is said to have
procured for him at Court, and by the fear, also, it is
said, instilled into him by Hamilton, that Charles meant
to reduce Scotland to an English province.3 But a
young man of high spirit, who "lived as in a romance";4
and whose love of heroism had been stirred to emulation
by the reading of Plutarch's Lives, could hardly have
failed to seek distinction where it could most readily be
found. Montrose had imbibed from his kinsman and
guardian, Lord Napier, an antipathy to bishops as well
as a deep distrust of Hamilton ; and he himself had a
political theory — or at all events he had such a theory
two years later — which must have drawn him to the
1 Charles's letters to Hamilton are printed in Burnet, and Hamilton's to
Charles in the Hamilton Papers, edited by Mr. Gardiner for the Camden
Society.
2 Baillie, ii. 261 . 3 Heylyn, p. 373. 4 Burnet's Own Time, i. 53.
394 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
popular side. He believed that the two worst abuses
of government were an " extended power," which is
despotism, and a "restrained power" which means the
tyranny of the strong over the weak ; and Scotland was
now suffering from the first of these evils as in after
days it suffered from the second.1
Even Montrose's ardour could obtain no more than
twenty subscriptions in Aberdeen. His clerical asso-
ciates were excluded from the pulpit ; and after preach-
ing for two days with little result from a balcony
in the town, they were involved in a little war of
pamphlets, in which the arguments against the Covenant
appear to have been much stronger than those used in
its defence.
Hamilton returned to Edinburgh on August 10.
Charles was now prepared to summon an Assembly on
the understanding that the bishops should be members,
that all ministers and moderators of presbyteries
deprived for refusing the Covenant should be restored,
that moderators of presbyteries should have seats in the
Assembly ex offido, and that no lay person should take
part in the choice of commissioners. Hamilton, how-
ever, soon found that the bishops would be suffered
to appear only for the purpose of being deposed, and
that the laity meant both to control the elections to the
Assembly and to be present in large numbers themselves.
This last point had almost caused a rupture between the
ministers and their lay associates, for the right of elders
1 Napier's Memoirs of Montrose, pp. 281-289. It is remarkable that even
at this period Hamilton questioned the depth of Montrose's attachment
to the Covenant. In November of this year, having enumerated the
principal lay leaders — Eothes, Balmerino, Lindsay, Lothian, Loudoun,
Yester, Cranston — he says, " There are many others as forward in show ;
amongst whom none more vainly foolish than Montrose." — Letter to
Charles, Hardivicke State Papers, ii. 117.
THE KING'S CONCESSIONS 395
to sit in presbyteries had been in abeyance for nearly
forty years.1 The ministers, however, were soon coerced
into submission to the other three Tables; and Hamilton,
though Charles had instructed him " to yield anything,
though unreasonable, rather than now to break," deemed
it advisable on this point to appeal in person to the
King.2
After an absence of three weeks, the Commissioner
arrived at Edinburgh for the third time on Septem-
ber 17. Charles's policy now was to grant all the
formal demands of the Covenanters, and by satisfying
the less violent to prevent the extremists from de-
manding more. The Canons, the Liturgy, and the
High Commission were to be absolutely given up ;
the Perth Articles were to be discharged, and, at the
pleasure of Parliament, repealed ; and Episcopacy was
to be limited with such restrictions as should accord
with the laws of the Church and kingdom. On the
other hand, Hamilton was to labour by all possible
means to stir up the ministers against the laity, and
the laity against the ministers ; and the Negative
Confession of 1581 as adopted by the Covenanters
was to be superseded by the same Confession supple-
mented by a bond in defence of the true religion,
the Crown and kingdom, which James VI. had
authorised in the year after the defeat of the Armada.
This last device Charles had reluctantly adopted at
the instance of Traquair, who hoped to confound the
malcontents by making the King himself a party to
their " no-popery " zeal. On the 22nd, after a long
1 " That custom hath been these 35 years by-past universally (and above
forty years in most Presbyteries) interrupted." — Petition against lay
elders presented to the Assembly : Large Declaration, p. 266.
2Burnet, p. 83 ; Large Declaration, pp. iii. 123 ; Baillie, i. 99, 100.
396 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
debate, the Privy Councillors were prevailed upon to
sign the Confession and bond, to pass an Act offering
their lives and fortunes in defence of the royal
authority, and to draw up a letter to the King,
thanking him in the most extravagant terms for his
" transcendent grace." Immediately thereafter, a pro-
clamation was published at the Cross announcing the
King's concessions, enjoining the new Covenant, and
appointing an Assembly to be held at Glasgow
on November 21, and a Parliament at Edinburgh
on May 15. The Covenanters, who had other
friends at Holyrood besides Sir Thomas Hope, had
laboured for four hours to avert, or at least to post-
pone, the decision of the Council ; and in a docu-
ment of even more than the usual length, which they
caused to be printed, they protested against the pro-
clamation, chiefly on the ground that it limited the
freedom of the Assembly, and that the signing of the
King's Covenant would invalidate their own.1
Charles had good reason to resent " this last
damnable protestation," which had no other object
than to intimidate the non-Presbyterians, and to deter
them from that full submission to which most of them
were much inclined. Rollock, who signed the pro-
testation on behalf of the ministers, is said to have had
no authority from the Table, which had shown great
repugnance to any such measure ; and the protesters
had some difficulty in re-establishing their authority
in Glasgow, where the people, though aware of what
had been done at Edinburgh, had not only received
the proclamation with the utmost joy, but had sent
two letters of thanks to the Commissioner — one from
the Town Council, and another from the clergy.
1 Burnet, pp. 89-103 ; Large Declaration, pp. 134-173.
"THE SHE PROPHETESS" 397
Wherever the proclamation arrived before the protes-
tation, it was cordially received ; and in many places
the protestation was disowned by the Covenanters
themselves.1 It is probable, however, that the King-
evoked as much ill-feeling by his adoption of the
Covenant as the Covenanters by their protestation.
The zealots attacked the new bond as a trick of
Satan to make them perjure themselves by abandon-
ing the old ; and the cool-headed denounced it quite
as strongly as a piece of mundane strategy designed
to break up the league. 28,000 signatures are said
to have been obtained, 12,000 of these in and around
Aberdeen ; 2 but the " small party," which Hamilton
claimed to have detached from the original Covenant,
was a mere apology for the great host of subscribers
which, in Traquair's expectation, was to have over-
whelmed the King's enemies without assistance from
England.
Meanwhile the "bangster Amazons" had not forgotten
their part. At Kinghorn in July, by such forcible
arguments as "wounds and blood," they had made a
zealous Covenanter of one Dr. Monro ; at Edinburgh in
October they visited Dr. Eliot "with many sad strokes,"
because he had occupied the pulpit when they expected
another preacher ; 3 and about the same time a great
impression was produced by a less formidable enthusiast
of the same sex. This was a mad woman named
Michelson — "the she Prophetess," as Gordon redundantly
calls her — who, lying face downwards in bed, uttered
much "holy tautological nonsense," which was inter-
preted to mean that the original Covenant was ratified
in Heaven, and that the King's had emanated from Hell.
1 Large Declaration, pp. 185-188 ; Baillie, i. 106.
2 Burnet, p. 110. 3 Baillie, i. 94, 98, 109.
398 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
Great numbers of people listened devoutly to this poor
maniac in her fits ; and by some of these the Earl of
Airth, who had altered a copy of her ravings so as to
express his contempt, was in some danger of being
stoned.1
Charles had now a pretext for withdrawing, or at
all events for postponing, the concessions which had been
received in so unbecoming a spirit. The bishops, who
from the first had opposed the holding of an Assembly,
urged many reasons for its prorogation in a letter to
Laud. Hamilton argued against this on the ground
that the Covenanters would still proceed with the
Assembly, whether Charles prorogued it or not, and
that a prorogation would only confirm the assertions
of those who had persuaded many that none of the
concessions would ever be made good.2 Looking to
the possibility of drawing off a party for the King, he
proposed, and Charles agreed, that the Assembly should
be allowed to meet, and that he should then, or soon
after, dissolve it on the ground of certain "nullities"
in its constitution, of the accumulation of which he
had for some time been taking a diligent account.
Before the end of September most of the presbyteries
had chosen their commissioners ; and the commissioners
were chosen in a manner which says little for the
sincerity of those who at that very time were protesting
against the King's proclamation as prejudicial to the
freedom of the Assembly. A blank commission, con-
demnatory of the late innovations, and blank only to
those who had not been entrusted with the names,3 was
1 Large Declaration, pp. 226-228 ; Gordon, i. 131, 132.
2 Hamilton Papers, pp. 47-48.
3 « Thirty -nine presbyteries already had chosen their commissioners, as
they were desired." — Baillie, i. 107.
PACKING THE ASSEMBLY 399
sent down from the Tables ; and, apart from certain
private instructions which forbad the election of
chapter-men, members of the High Commission, and
ministers who had conformed to the Liturgy and
<Jv
Canons, the presbytery was to be constituted in such
a way that the commissioner could hardly fail to be
of the right stamp. Every kirk-session was to be
represented by the minister and one elder ; and as the
laymen would thus be equal in number to the clergy,
and as the three clerical commissioners were chosen out
of a leet of either four or six, all of whom withdrew
before the election, the laity, if united, could carry
whatever candidates they pleased. It is said that in
some presbyteries the ministers chosen had only one
clerical vote, and that in all cases they were elected by
a majority of lay elders. By this means the nobles and
gentry hoped to root out the bishops, and at the same
time, as they told Hamilton, to re-establish Presby-
terianism under such conditions as should secure them
against its tyrannical power.1
That such measures should have been needed to secure
the co-operation of the clergy is sufficient evidence how
widely Episcopacy had struck its roots amongst them in
little more than thirty years. The ministers, as a body,
had no quarrel with a system of government under which
they had doubled their stipends and attained to a con-
siderable degree of culture, as well as of social importance
and well-being. It was not Episcopacy that had caused
a revolution in the Church, but the ritualistic movement
initiated by James VI. , and developed by Charles in
conjunction with Maxwell and Laud ; and but for
Charles's long refusal to withdraw a Liturgy illegally
1 Large Declaration, pp. 129, 189-192, 266 ; Hamilton's speech to the
Assembly in Burnet, p. 129.
400 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
introduced, the nobles could never have carried the
clergy with them so far. The majority of the ministers
had become reconciled, if not positively attached, even
to the Perth Articles ; and the minority, which was
willing to go the whole way with Laud, is described
by a contemporary as not "inconsiderable either for
number or learning." l Episcopacy, in fact, was as dear
to this generation of clergy as Presbytery had been
to the one before ; and the Covenanters were as slow to
disclose their design of abolishing, as James had been to
disclose his of introducing, bishops.2
The Covenanters, having now ensured the con-
demnation Of Episcopacy, had nothing more to do than
to bring its representatives to trial ; and on October 24
those of them who were not commissioners presented
an indictment to the Presbytery of Edinburgh against
Bishop David Lindsay and the other thirteen prelates.
The constitutional charge against the bishops was
reasonable enough in so far as it accused them of
having brought in the Canons, the Liturgy, and the
High Commission contrary to law, and of having
obtained consecration in England without the consent
of the Church. With these exceptions, the charge was
more irrelevant than true. It was absurd to represent
the Anglican consecration as an infringement of the
Act of Assembly of 1580 abolishing the episcopal office,
which had long since been implicitly repealed ; and
there was no ground at all for the first and most
important charge, that the bishops had violated the
"caveats" enacted by the Assembly of 1600 at
1 Gordon, i. 16.
2 Baillie says that " at the first forming " of the Covenant, " any design
or hope to have gotten down Bishops altogether did appear in no man, to
my knowledge." — i. 182.
THE ASSEMBLY MEETS 401
Montrose. We have seen that the system of election,
to which these restrictions referred, had never been put
into practice, that James VI. had set it aside only
six months later, and that the Assembly in 1602 had
expressly adopted the King's mode of making bishops
at the expense of its own.1 The rest of the indictment
was a strange mixture of honest Puritanism, blank
ignorance, and intemperate zeal. The bishops wrere
accused of inculcating auricular confession, of changing
the sacrament into a sacrifice, the table into an altar,
and ministers into priests, of denying the Pope to be
Antichrist, of opposing the Calvinistic theology, and of
restraining discipline " against Papists, Sorcerers,
Adulterers, and other gross offenders " ; and the indict-
ment concluded with an intimation that they were
' slandered constantly " as being guilty of all manner of
sins, from profanation of the Sabbath to drunkenness,
perjury, adultery, and incest. The Presbytery having
referred the accusation to the Assembly, as its authors
desired, ordered it to be read in every church by the
minister or reader ; and thus on the following Sunday
the bishops were held up to public infamy on charges of
the grossest kind, not one of which their enemies were
ever able to prove.
On Wednesday, November 21, 1638, the Assembly
opened at Glasgow in the noble minster, under whose
spacious roof Scotsmen for so many generations had met
for worship, and, after the lapse of seven-and-a-half
centuries, are meeting still. Hamilton professed to
Charles that never since Christianity began had " such
a crew assembled together, and that in such equipage
1 " As for that Act at Montrose, let them answer to it that have their
calling by that commission." — Bishops' Declinature ; Large Declaration,
p. 261.
20
402 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
. . . to treat in ecclesiastic affairs."1 Hardly any of
the clergy wore gowns, and most of the laymen had
daggers or swords. In addition to a crowd of witnesses
and petitioners, and " huge numbers of people ... in
the vaults above," each of the 240 members of Assembly
was attended by two, if not three or four, assessors ; and
the confusion and uproar at the opening of each sitting
were so great that Baillie complains that his country-
men " might learn from Canterbury, yea from the Pope,
from the Turks or Pagans, modesty and manners." 2
A declinature had been drawn up at great length in
the name of six bishops and carefully revised by the
King, protesting against the Assembly as a packed
convention of laymen, and of ministers elected by
laymen, who had avowed themselves enemies to
episcopal rule. On the second day, after the formal
business of the first, Hamilton desired that this docu-
ment should be read ; but the Assembly insisted on
electing a Moderator, to which office Henderson was
unanimously called, and on the third day, after choosing
Johnston of Warriston as Clerk, they still refused to
hear the declinature, although Hamilton and Traquair
argued warmly that, as a protest against the constitution
of the Assembly, it ought to be read before the com-
missions were approved. During the reading of the
commissions it transpired that Erskine of Dun had been
elected lay elder by a few of the Presbytery of Brechin,
that the Presbytery at a fuller meeting had elected
Lord Carnegie, and that the Tables had rejected the
second return as contrary to their direction. On
Tuesday, the 27th, the long-deferred declinature was
admitted and read ; and Hamilton in its support pro-
duced three protestations against the intrusion of lay
1 Hamilton Papers, p. 59. 2 Baillie, i. 123.
ILLEGALITIES EXPOSED 403
elders — one signed by twenty ministers in name of the
Church, another from certain ministers and laymen
of Dundee, and a third from eight ministers, including
several Covenanters, of the Presbytery of Glasgow.
This last was withdrawn at the request of the Principal
of the University, Dr. Strang ; and Hamilton learned, to
his great indignation, that the Moderator and others had
sent for Strang on the previous night, and when other
arguments failed, had told him plainly that, unless he
withdrew the protestation, they would " deal with him
as an open enemy."1 On Wednesday, after a long
debate in which he maintained against Balcanquhal2
that the bishops were as amenable to the Assembly as
the Remonstrants to the Synod of Dort, the Moderator
said curtly that, since the competence as well as the
legality of the Assembly was called in question, it
behoved them to decide both points by putting them to
the vote.
Hamilton now saw that the crisis had come. In
an able speech, suggestive of what Baillie calls his
" brave and masterlike expression," he showed that
the Covenanters had so " handled and marred the
matter" that that Assembly could not be called free
"by any man who hath not given a bill of divorce
both to his understanding and conscience." He pointed
out that the voting of lay elders could not be revived
without authority after being in abeyance for forty
years ; that in every presbytery the lay elders had
outvoted the ministers, which was contrary even to the
Second Book of Discipline ; that most of the elders, if
1 These are the words of Baillie (i. 134), who himself assisted to coerce
the Principal.
2 Balcanquhal was Hamilton's chaplain, and the author of the Large
Declaration.
404 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
not all, had been admitted after the proclamation of the
Assembly, and some the very day before the election ;
that some were minors ; that some were not resident
within their respective presbyteries ; that some had
no authority from the kirk-sessions ; and that the
commissioners had no right to bring assessors, without
whose consent some of them had sworn not to vote.
As to the clerical members, he asserted that some had
never been ordained, that many had been illegally
admitted or restored ; and in conclusion, he asked how
the Assembly could be lawful, when its members were
pledged to overturn the whole ecclesiastical system
existing under King and Parliament by the statute
law.1
Henderson in reply to this speech wron the Commis-
sioner's approval "as a good Christian and dutiful
subject" by pleading in very moderate terms for the
prerogative of the Church ; but when Rothes and
Loudoun ventured to challenge his assertions as to the
pre-limiting of the Assembly, Hamilton produced two
documents well fitted to establish their truth. One of
these, without date, contained nothing more remarkable
than the first article, in which allusion was made to
the misery " inexpressibly great " which would befall
the Covenanters, if their adversaries " shall prevail
over us in a free General Assembly." The other, of
the same date as the public instructions already
mentioned, and to " be discovered to none but to
brethren well affected to the cause," was much more
1 Burnet, pp. 128-133. It is probable that this speech was only
partially delivered ; for the greater part of it is engrossed without
acknowledgment in the Large Declaration as the King's reasons for
holding the Assembly to be null. It appears from Baillie (i. 124) that
Hamilton did not deliver at all the speech he had prepared for the
opening day.
THE ORDER TO DISPERSE 405
explicit. It provided, amongst other things, that none
but Covenanters, " and those well-affected," should be
chosen as ruling elders ; that the ruling elders should
come to the presbytery in equal numbers with the
ministers, and " put themselves in possession notwith-
standing any opposition"; that the Commissioners of
the Shire should convene the elders of the presbytery,
" and enjoin them upon their oath that they give vote
to none but to those who are named already in the
meeting at Edinburgh." Hamilton admitted that these
instructions had been sent without the knowledge of
the " public Tables " ; but he easily disposed of the
plea " that they might be some private advices from
one friend to another " by showing that he had received
identical copies from different parts of the country, and
all, as he afterwards assured Charles, from indignant
Covenanters.1 After some further debate, Hamilton
dissolved the Assembly, and commanded the members
to disperse on pain of treason. The Covenanters replied
with a protestation " in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the only Head and Monarch of his own Church,"
during the reading of which, at four o'clock on Novem-
ber 28, the King's Commissioner withdrew.2
On the previous day, in very bitter terms, Hamil-
ton had announced the impending rupture to the
1 In their protestation at Edinburgh on December 18, the Covenanters
asserted that this second paper was a forgery " craftily intermixed " with
two articles borrowed from the true copy of their private instructions,
which is printed in the appendix to Bail lie, i. 469. But the paper could
not have been forged by Covenanters ; and Gordon tells us that, twenty
years later, persons known to him had " preserved the principal copies of
these private instructions which were then denied ; and they are to be
seen, subscribed by the Clerk of the Tables' hand." — Scots A/airs, i. 190.
The Clerk of^the Tables, as of the Assembly, was Johnston.
2 For the Glasgow Assembly, see the Large Declaration, pp. 234-302 ;
Baillie, i. 118-143 ; Peterkin's Records, pp. 128-147.
406 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
King, protesting with suspicious vehemence that he
had done his best, even to the straining of his con-
science, and laying the blame on every available
shoulder but his own. He complained of Traquair
for quarrelling with the bishops, and of the bishops
for needlessly provoking Traquair ; he said he hated
Scotland " next to Hell," and prayed that his sons
should be bred in England, and that his daughters
should never marry Scotsmen. The third Marquis of
Hamilton was a true representative of that diffident,
irresolute, and mysterious house ; and his character,
the subject of more discussion than it would seem to
deserve, suggests the type of profundity satirised in
Dean Swift's simile of the well which "will pass for
wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because
it is wondrous dark." His position in Scotland might
have compromised a much franker man. He had
succeeded Buckingham as the King's closest and
most intimate friend, yet he had pretensions to the
Scottish crown which had given rise to serious
inquiry at Court. His mother, the daughter of the
Earl of Glencairn, was a fanatical Covenanter. His
two sisters were both married to Covenanting peers
— one to the Earl of Cassillis, the other to Lord
Lindsay ; and, as he often reminded Rothes in their
private interviews, he had too great a stake in the
country not to be anxious for its peace. Circum-
stances had thus conspired with his natural disposi-
tion to make Hamilton — what Lord Shelburne was a
century and a half later — the most thoroughly dis-
trusted statesman of his time. Sir Philip Warwick,
in explanation of his " serpentine winding," remarks
that even in youth " the air of his countenance had
such a cloud on it that nature seems to have im-
HAMILTON'S DOUBLE-DEALING 40T
pressed aliquid insigne " ; Clarendon refers to " his.
natural darkness and reservation in discourse " ;
Baillie, who really admired him, complains on one
occasion that his " ways were so ambiguous that no
man understood him"; and Heylyn calls him "a
notable dissembler, true only to his own ends, and
a most excellent master in the art of insinuation."
In spite of all his protestations, it is tolerably
certain that Hamilton had striven rather to preserve
peace and to secure immunity to himself in the event
of war than to discharge his duty to the King.
Baillie mentions incidentally that, before his appoint-
ment as Commissioner, he had privately encouraged
the malcontents to proceed with their supplications ; 1
and Bishop Guthrie tells against him a remarkable story
which he professes to have received from Montrose,
and also at second-hand from a minister, both of
whom were present when the incident took place.
It seems that on July 5, the day on which he was
forced to tear up the Act of Council, Hamilton
went out of the room with a deputation of Covenan-
ters, and addressed them thus : " My Lords and Gentle-
men, I spoke to you before those Lords of Council
as the King's Commissioner. Now, there being none
present but yourselves, I speak to you as a kindly
Scotchman. If you go on with courage and resolu-
tion, you will carry what you please ; but if you
faint and give ground in the least, you are undone.
A word is enough to wise men."2
1 Baillie, i. 99.
2 Guthrie's Memoirs, pp. 34-35. Sir James Turner, however, remarks-
that, if Guthrie got this story from Montrose, it is strange that the latter
did not include it amongst the charges which he brought against Hamilton
at Oxford in 1643. — Turner's Memoirs, p. 235.
408 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
The charge of trying to serve two masters was pre-
ferred with much less reason against the Lord Treasurer,
Traquair, whose loyalty had indeed been severely tried.
We have seen that for nine months Charles made no
effort to stem the tide of discontent in Scotland, except
by occasionally rebuking it at the Market Cross ; and
Traquair, who had to play the chief part in this solemn
trifling, might well take God to witness that he was
"never so perplexed what to do." Without express
authority, he could not venture to resist ; and if he
gave way, he was "calumniated as an underhand
conniver." l In such circumstances it would not have
been surprising if the Lord Treasurer had privately
encouraged the supplicants with a view to putting
pressure on the King. Of this, however, apart from
the idle gossip of Guthrie and Spalding, there is no
good evidence, beyond the statement of Rothes that
soon after Hamilton's arrival as Commissioner, and pro-
bably under his influence, he counselled the Covenanters
to " deal for " an Assembly and Parliament ; and
Traquair's loyalty is reluctantly admitted by Lord
Lindsay, who writes of him as " having shown himself
.so small a friend to our business and so earnest in that
was commanded him by His Majesty."2 In personal
character Traquair was as great a contrast to Hamilton
as can well be conceived. He was a violent, impetuous,
much-swearing man, prone to carry everything before
him in what Baillie calls " a spate of passion," the best
1 Traquair to Hamilton, October 19, 1637. — Hardwicke State Papers, ii. 96.
2 Rothes, p. 147 ; Hamilton Papers, p. 101. Burnet's statement (History
of His Own Time, i. 46) on the authority of Primrose, Clerk of Council,
that Traquair himself drew up the first protestation is utterly incredible,
unless by " first protestation " he means the declinature against the
bishops, and not the document the reading of which the Treasurer took
such pains to elude.
THE BISHOPS DEPOSED
orator of his time in Scotland, highly educated, and
hailed by Drummond of Hawthornden on his appoint-
ment to the Treasurership as a true friend to the
Muses.1
The Assembly sat for three weeks and a day after
Hamilton had dissolved it in the King's name — only
some half-dozen members having then withdrawn. It
annulled all the six Assemblies which had been held
since 1606, partly on technical grounds, but chiefly
on the ground of that lack of freedom, which was
the great argument against itself. It condemned the
Canons, the Liturgy, the Book of Ordination, and the
High Commission. It excommunicated eight of the
bishops, and deposed them all. It found that Episco-
pacy and the Five Articles had been ; abjured in the
Covenant ; and all who had not already subscribed
were required to sign the Covenant with a declaration,
to that effect.
With a view to proceeding against the bishops on
personal as well as on public grounds, the Tables,
had sent out a circular on August 27, requiring the
presbyteries to substantiate a long list of charges.
" common to all or proper to any," which were assumed
to be true. This preliminary investigation, however,
would seem to have had little result ; for the committee
of Assembly, which conducted the prosecution, is said
to have been retarded by having to collect as well as to-
1 Masson's Drummond, p. 268. Traquair and Eothes were accustomed
to express themselves with somewhat unnecessary warmth. Johnston
of Warriston in 1641 reports the former as having said "that before he
perished, he should mix Heaven and Earth and Hell together." Rothes,
not long before, in a conversation with Sir Thomas Hope, had denounced
" that swinger, the Treasurer," threatening to " raze him out of the earth,"
and " to sweep his memory forth of the land." — Napier's Memoirs of
Montrose, i. 231, 323.
410 PRESBYTERY RESTORED. 1638
receive evidence.1 The minor charges against the
bishops are quite in accordance with what we know of
their repugnance to the superstition and moral severity
of Puritanism, as well as to its cruel creed. One can
believe more or less readily that some of them had
"" slighted charming," had dispensed on occasion with the
hair-gown and penitential stool, had prohibited fasting
on Sunday, had travelled on that day, transacted
business, played cards, or curled on the ice. The graver
charges, on the other hand, are inherently improbable ;
and against these and all the charges there is a strong
presumption in the fact that the records contain no
allusion, except in the very vaguest terms, to any
personal fault. Baillie's narrative enables us to realise
the sort of atmosphere in which the whole proceedings
took place. He tells us that the bishops and their
adherents were " ordinary swearers," inasmuch as they
used such strong expressions as " Before God," " By my
•conscience," "On my soul." The Bishop of Moray, we
are told, " had all the ordinary faults of a bishop " ;
" it was undertaken to prove " that Spottiswoode
had been guilty of adultery and incest ; the Bishop of
Brechin was incriminated by the appearance of a woman
and child " that made his adultery very probable " ; 2
and " such was his impudence " that, if Hamilton had
not deterred him, he would have appeared before
the Assembly to make his defence.3 The Bishop
1 Baillie, i. 148.
2 Gordon tells us that when this woman was asked to point out the
"bishop in a group of " black coats," she pointed out the wrong man ;
and she is said to have confessed that she was suborned to make
the accusation by Lord Johnstone, afterwards Earl of Hartfell.— Scots
A/airs, ii. 101.
3 It appears from an anonymous letter to Johnston of Warriston that
the Covenanters, or some of them, were prepared to intimidate the
CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION 411
of Dunblane was excommunicated as a professed
Arminian — "what drunkenness, swearing, or other
crimes was libelled," adds Baillie, " I do not remember."
As the Acts of deposition show, the bishops were not
deposed for immorality, but for repudiating the Assembly
and abuse of what was supposed to be an illegal power ;
and though the Bishops of Caithness and Dunkeld are
said to have been guilty of " the common faults," they
as well as the Bishop of Argyll were re-admitted, on
their submission, to the pastoral charge.1
With the bishops, their few remaining adherents
amongst the clergy were deposed or referred to com-
mittees for trial. Most of them, though not all, were
accused merely of false doctrine and popery ; and
Baillie commends the Assembly for dealing leniently
with the minister of Grail, who in contrast with these
"monstrous fellows" was charged with nothing more
heinous than "meddling with the church-box."2
It need hardly be said that this was a revolution
in the life and character as well as in the government
of the Church ; and little as we have found to admire
in its progress, we shall find still less in its results.
By the confession of one at least of its opponents in
after days, the ecclesiastical system now overthrown
had not been one of excessive rigour. Not many
nonconformists had been deposed — only two, Blair's
biographer remarks, in the province of Fife ; some
such had even been ordained; and it has been truly
said that more ministers were deprived and banished
by the Covenanters in nine months than by Arch-
bishop Spottiswoode in upwards of twenty years.3
bishops from coming to Glasgow, as their public appearance would be
prejudicial to the cause. — Hailes' Memorials, p. 46.
1 Baillie, i. 152-168. 2 Ibid. p. 154. 3 Grub, iii. 67.
412 PRESBYTERY RESTORED, 1638
Events were soon to prove that what at first sight
might seem to have been the heat of revolution was
no more than the normal vehemence of the Knoxian
or zealous party in the Church, aggravated, as it now
was, by the fanaticism of a class lower and more
ignorant than that from which the bulk of its forces
had hitherto been drawn. We have traced the causes
external to itself through which in 1638 as in 1560
this party had attained to a temporary importance
out of all proportion to its real strength. It remains
to show how in the development of its own qualities
Puritanism of this violent type subsided once more
to its natural level.
GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO.
0265G0053
1990
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